Go! St. Louis 1/2 Marathon

I ran my 3rd half marathon yesterday--it was a beautiful day in downtown St. Louis.

Before the race, I met up with some of the people who work for my school district.  A couple of guys had organized group training runs--so we called ourselves Team Parkway.  It was great to see familiar faces before the run and yell encouragement.

I left my camera with David, and he did a good job documenting various stages of the race... even though he never managed to see me during the race.  Debra (my MIL) commented that she got up at 4am to watch me and never managed to see me.  Boo!

Here the elite runners take off.
Note: I am not one of the elite runners.  :)

Some of the not-so-elite runners.  Still not in these pictures, but cool none-the-less.

It was a fairly warm day for a race (highs in the upper 70's) and lots of people were collapsed along the race course.  Scary!  One of my friends even passed out at mile 11 and had to get an IV.  She's fine, but that's terrifying!

My goal was to finish the race
1a) Faster than in previous years
2a) Ideally, under 2 hours.

In 2008, I ran the race in 2:04:23
In 2009, my time was 2:02:25
This year, 2010, my time was....

1:54:58!  

My "chip" time was actually 1:55:48...but I stopped to use the rest room and paused my Garmin.  I'm going to totally use my Garmin time as my "official" time.  Because it's better and I'm greedy like that.  Either way, though... my time was under 2 hours!!  I think my pace/mile was roughly 8:39 minutes/ mile.  At least, that's what the Garmin says.  Garmin also says that I ran like 13.25 miles...so take my pace with a grain of salt.

After the race, I met up with some Parkway people again...and searched for David and Debra.  Apparently, I didn't communicate my post-race meeting plan very well.  I ended up borrowing a cell phone and calling my own phone (which David was carrying) in order to find them.  Notice all the snacks I'm carrying--I have a hard time turning down the free stuff they offer you after the race, even though I didn't eat any of it.

 We took some family race shots before heading back for a shower (which I needed--check out my sweat monster face!).

All in all, it was an amazing day.  Now I just need to find another race--I love this experience!