Ok, so this is a (very, very) late race report but better late than never right?!?
Angie’s Half Crazy Half Marathon was my last half-marathon for the season. It was held on April 7th and it started earlier than all of my other races, 6:30 am, but I understood why as it was a HOT race. I saw people at the start line wearing pants and long sleeve shirts and thought to myself “they are going to regret it”. Although it did get pretty hot, upper 80′s, I saw people pushing through in their warm running clothes all the way to the finish line, amazing.
About the race: The course was a loop that starts in Clear Lake, passes through three different cities, and by the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center. Parts of it were scenic and the rest of it was on main highways and roads. It was a flat, fast course with unfortunately little shade.
This is the first race of the season that I knew I was running alone. The friend I had signed up with notified me the week of the race that she wasn’t able to make it. Since I had pretty much run the last two races alone I wasn’t worried. I was actually looking forward to running alone, something that I never thought I would love. The past two races brought out my real joy of running and for the first time in years I felt happy and comfortable completing 13.1 miles without having someone to talk to or music to listen to. I really felt like a runner.
I got to the race early and was surprised by the crowd. This race was over double the size of my past two races (around 950 people) and the lines for the bathroom were insane. Luckily, I was able to go and make it to the start line 4 minutes before the start, whew.
The race started before the sun came up so it felt great to get moving and warm up. The first few miles felt pretty slow, I think because it was still dark. When I looked at my watch and realized I had been keeping a pace in the low 10′s I felt a lot better.
As the sun came up my pace did actually slow down a little. I slowed partly because it was hot and partly because I really wanted to enjoy this race and scenery. I took extra time to enjoy peeking through the fence at the Space Center, to take in the views over Clear Lake and enjoy the scenery in all the parks we ran by. This race was more about my love of running and being outdoors than getting another medal and competing against my best finish time. This race was just for ME and I enjoyed every.single.minute of it.
I finished the race with a time of 2:19:13, 10:38/M pace (10:31 pace according to my Garmin). I treated myself to an after race massage and even enjoyed a few Girl Scout Cookies J
p.s. There was a really cute proposal at the beginning of the race!
End note: As I was writing this post I got very nostalgic about this past running season. The 2012-13 season was my second season of long races, although I have been running for 5 years. I found that I truly LOVE running and it is no longer just a way for met to get and stay in shape. I am sad that there will be no more long races for a couple of months. I can’t wait until next season rolls around and I am able to run some of my favorite races again. Until then, I’ll be training for my first Triathlon!
by: Cara














She loved petting the furry animals even though they were very, very stinky















