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Austin Half Marathon

After running in a bunch of 5ks and a 10k last fall, I decided just before Christmas that it was time to take the next step and see if I could hack it at the next level. At that point, I was starting to get up to 12-13 miles on my weekend training runs anyway. I figured I might as well get some credit for it.

So I signed up for the Austin Half-Marathon, which was scheduled for Valentine’s Day. Thanks to some nifty maneuvering, I was able to get a good rate at a funky new hotel and pawn the kids off with the in-laws for that weekend. Boom! Instant Valentine’s weekend getaway for The Wife and me. With a wee bit of running mixed in.

Race day

I had told myself that racing in Austin would basically be the same as all the 5ks I had done. I mean, people all standing behind a line and running when the timer starts can’t be all that different, right? Wrong.

First of all, I started nowhere near the starting line. In fact, when the fireworks went off signaling the start of the race, I was still five blocks back in the crowd with my pace group. That’s right – when the race started at the intersection of 2nd and Congress, I was standing in between 7th and 8th streets.

Secondly, I was surprised how crowded the course was. Not just at the beginning, but throughout the entire race. When you’re running in a dinky little local 5k with maybe 150-200 people, things tend to thin out a little after the first mile or so. That was mostly certainly not the case in Austin.

They had shut down the streets and given us as much room as possible, but the combined marathon and half-marathon fields added up to about 18,000 people – that’s a lot of people to cram together. It thinned out marginally after the first five miles, but for pretty much the entire race, I was caught up in a rushing stream of sweaty people.

And really, I think that helped me a lot. Fairly early on, I managed to get caught in a pocket that was running about a minute per mile faster than my normal pace and I became determined to stick with them. As I looked at the people ahead of me, I realized that were a ton (or literally, several tons) of people behind me. And I damn sure wasn’t going to let them catch up with me.

Before that race, the furthest I had run in one stretch was about 3.5 miles. Sure, my total workouts were in the 13-14 miles range, but I was always mixing running and walking. Usually, I’d run 1-2 miles and then walk for about 30 seconds, run another 1-2, etc…

But something got a hold of me that day. Maybe it was the adrenaline of my first real, big race. Maybe it was just not wanting to get run over by the thousands of people behind me. But for whatever reason, I ran whole the 13.1 miles without slowing down to walk. (A feat I have not been able to duplicate since, nor would I even try.)

I became aware of what was going on around mile 5 and made it my goal to just keep running until the next mile marker. And then the next one. And the next one. Before I knew it, I was at mile 10 and I knew I had it in the bag as long I as didn’t fixate on it and psych myself into feeling exhausted. At that point, your legs are really chugging along independent of the rest of your body and running becomes almost an autonomic function. I don’t think I could have stopped if I had wanted to.

That theory was tested sorely around mile 11 when someone had the bright idea to put a giant uphill climb at the end of the half-marathon. All of us halfers were pretty tired at that point and I saw more than one person climbing the hill in a four-point stance. Fortunately, I was to keep the legs churning, made it up the hill, whipped through the capitol grounds and crossed the finish line.

Crossing the finish line was pretty awesome. There were tons of people packed on either side of road, cheering and yelling. I felt like I had really accomplished something. And good goo, was I tired!

I found out a few minutes later that the crowd had been all worked up for the guy who won the full marathon – and came in about thirty seconds before I did. That’s okay, though. The way I remember it, they were all cheering for me.