Nike Women's Half Marathon Race Report

[enfuego23]

Last Wednesday, I went in to have my teeth cleaned and both the hygienist and DH (he's my dentist) said my throat looked really red and I had had a really bad sore throat for the past two days - yep, I had strep throat but got on antibiotics that day.
Fast forward to Friday - I took the day off from school and got ready to fly out to DC with DH. My throat is still pretty sore but Advil helped and I just tried to think positive thoughts so I wouldn't freak out about my half marathon that I trained so hard for.

On Saturday, we headed to Georgetown for packet pickup - ugh:( we waited in line for awhile which was annoying but the expo was even worse. It was in a small white tent and was super crowded inside. I grabbed some mini Luna bars and got the heck out of there. I was disappointed - the only things there were Nuun tastings, bare minerals doing makeup tutorials, Paul Mitchell and Nike.
I wanted to check out the Nike store but it was jammed packed and I was not going to subject DH to the agony of waiting in line again. I'm not really sure why packet pick up was all the way in Georgetown.

Race day: I didn't get a great amount of sleep the night before but I was feeling ok. I got up, jumped in the shower to help warm up my muscles, got dressed, ate oatmeal and a banana and DH and I walked over to the corrals. It was chilly so I opted to wear a throw away LS tech shirt. When I went to get into my corral they tried to tell me it was too crowded and that I would have to go all the way to the back - um...no, I'm not doing that, so I just squeezed past a couple girls and found a space to stand and stretch a bit.
The start went off with no problems and I wanted to hold back the first 3 miles because I wasn't sure if my energy would hold up the whole race. I kept a pace between 8:10-8:20 for the first 3 miles which was difficult because it was really crowded those first couple of miles - a lot of weaving:(
The crowd support was great! I liked the course but hated running through the tunnel twice. It screwed up my garmin and it was so loud with the bands in the tunnel. I loved all the marching bands on the course and the weather was perfect. I fueled at mile 8 with my own Gu because the race had shot blocks and Luna bars. Did anyone else think it was weird that they were giving us Luna bars? I can't eat and chew something while I'm running so I thought that was weird.
The last three miles were tough and the hill at mile 11 sucked but I had enough energy to sprint the last 1/2 mile and was greeted by handsome men in tuxedos giving out the Tiffany necklaces. The finish had a ton of food - I grabbed some bananas, Luna protein bars and met up with DH. He snapped a couple of pictures of me in my sweaty euphoria ( I PRed and did better than my A goal - 1:46:10)
I finished 665th out of close to 15,000 so that was cool. Great race overall:) I love DC and my first race here was awesome!

[thom]

Congrats on your race! Hope you get well soon too.

[libbygrl109]

That is an awesome finish! Hope you're feeling better soon.

[kams]

Imagine what your pr will be when you're feeling totally healthy and not dodging people for the first 3 miles! You're amazing - great race!

[Wines Not Whines]

I'm glad you had a fun race!

[thebulldog]

That's awesome. I thought it was really strange too they were handing out luna bars. Not during a run!

i be typing from me phone. typos and grammer dont count.

[Deleted]

That's awesome and sounds like a lot of fun. Congrats and hope you are feeling better!

[gt7301b]

I am with you on the Luna bars... Who wants to to chomp down on a Luna bar during a race? Now I may have grabbed quite a few post race for later

I also hated the tunnel, I was trying to run 9 min miles and my first mile was 8:20. Opppsssss. I'm surprised you thought it was crowded, compared to other races of this size I thought people were pretty spread out. How far up were you able to go?

[clseale]

Hmmm....like mini Luna bars? This doesn't seem that weird to me. Maybe a little weird since it was just a half, but there were bananas and fig newtons at my last race. There's usually always some type of "real" food option. 

Congrats again on an awesome race!!

[enfuego23]

I thought it was weird that they were handing the Luna bars out while we were racing. I'm all for getting them after the race but can't imagine eating one while I'm running.

Sorry for the typos in my post, I'm still in DC and wrote the post from my phone.

[enfuego23]

Apr 29, 2013 11:27:55 GMT -5 gt7301b said:

I am with you on the Luna bars... Who wants to to chomp down on a Luna bar during a race? Now I may have grabbed quite a few post race for later

I also hated the tunnel, I was trying to run 9 min miles and my first mile was 8:20. Opppsssss. I'm surprised you thought it was crowded, compared to other races of this size I thought people were pretty spread out. How far up were you able to go?

I was right up front and it was very crowded. My Garmin had the race measured 13.5. I think the course was long on my garmin because I was weaving and trying to get around people so much

[gt7301b]

Apr 29, 2013 12:21:59 GMT -5 enfuego23 said:

Apr 29, 2013 11:27:55 GMT -5 gt7301b said:

I am with you on the Luna bars... Who wants to to chomp down on a Luna bar during a race? Now I may have grabbed quite a few post race for later

I also hated the tunnel, I was trying to run 9 min miles and my first mile was 8:20. Opppsssss. I'm surprised you thought it was crowded, compared to other races of this size I thought people were pretty spread out. How far up were you able to go?

I was right up front and it was very crowded. My Garmin had the race measured 13.5. I think the course was long on my garmin because I was weaving and trying to get around people so much

Wow!!! My Garnin only measured the race at 13.28. You really weren't kidding. You probably should have been even further up, the first four corrals were tiny and were packed in pretty tightly.

[sadlebred]

Congratulations!

[D2M]

Congrats! I cannot believe you PR'd with a sore throat. I'm such a baby when I'm sick. That's amazing.

[katinthehat]

that's pretty awesome - sick and traveling? you're a rockstar!

[Brit]

Great job! That's a huge PR!

[mrshandy]

Congrats on a great PR!

[breezy8407]

Wow - great pr! Hope you are feeling better.

(I agree the Luna bars are a weird choice. If they wanted to give out samples for marketing, why not just at the end of the race?)

[no0b]

Wow that's great! Ditto giving them out at the end of the race. I would do nothing but choke if eating one during the race. Gu all of the way!

[babygirlpriest]

Ditto OP!

I live local so was able to do packet pick-up and expo during a fairly dead time (11 am Friday). I was also pretty bummed by how small the expo was.

The start was awful. I was in the 10-12 min group and by 6:40 they weren't letting anyone else in. I got there at 6:45 and was SOL. Ended up starting behind the 12:something pace runners and people who started out walking. My 5k split was almost 4 min slower than any other split. Really frustrating.

And the finishers boutique had an estimated wait time of 45 min to get in by the time I got there (2:25). Umm, yeah, no. Felt really great about my run and would have spent $$ but no way in hell I was waiting around.

It was my first half so nothing really to compare it to but other than the hot mess of a start, no huge complaints.

[enfuego23]

I bought a long sleeved shirt at the finisher's boutique b/c I didn't get anything at the Nike store during packet pickup - I was annoyed because I wasn't able to look at anything, we were only allowed to point at what we wanted and then they rang up our purchase.

my small pet peeve and I'm sure many of you feel differently about this than I do but... I don't like how so many of the shirts said "Nike Half Marathon Finisher" I don't feel like most of the runners just finished the race - we "raced" the race, we "conquered" the race, we "killed" the race, all I know is that i didn't just "finish" the race