I did finish the race, and in the top half of my age group and of men/women overall. However, I got muscle cramps about 10 miles in, and ended up walking about two miles I didn't plan to and finishing a good twenty minutes behind my goal time. Which was somewhat sad.
However, in the last mile I met three very nice people who were also just trying to get across the finish line, and we all motivated each other and cheered each other up the last big hill and through the finish chute. One of them was a mother of three who turns forty in six months, and she was running her first half. The second guy, Kevin, was also running his first and had a baby and wife yelling encouragement and promising hugs at the finish.
The third man was my running partner for most of the last mile; he and I had been playing walk/run tag since about mile 10, and finally struck up a conversation to compare cramps and try to judge the remaining distance while jogging through the last mile. He had a fabulous attitude and completely cracked up the "runners" around us several times, especially when we jogged through a bunch of walkers and he said, as we barely outpaced them, "Thanks for making way for us--you can't stop this freight train a'runnin!"
Really, it was hard to complain too much when Matt and the kids were waiting for me at the finish line to cheer me on! It was really sweet to see the bug in particular jumping up and down and yelling, "There's mommy! Run faster!" After the finish I was reasonably useless for a few hours, but oddly the long walking/jogging cooldown ensured that I had very little muscle soreness the next day which was a great discovery.
Next year I am going to do 10K's instead and try to get faster before going long again. I stop having fun around 90 minutes into a run at this point, so maybe if I spend a year getting faster I can get further in 90 minutes. :)
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