What an incredible year it has been! After realizing I would not be able to complete my goal of participating in the Hershey Half Marathon due to a schedule conflict, I became super determined to complete at least one race each month. With the completion of the Jingle Bell Run on December 15, I met my goal for the year with some absolutely huge milestones along the way!
Here is the chart showing all of my results, including time, overall place, age group place, and, when possible, my placing out of all the female participants:
Some areas to highlight:
1) I had been doing "couch to 5K" in the early part of the year, which really resulted in my improvement between the January and February races.
2) Ben and Tim Day was a HUGE highlight in the year because I felt I had not been performing well in May, June, and July. Then, all of a sudden, I had a PR with a HUGE improvement over my previous best time.
3) Warrior Dash... Wow. What a huge accomplishment. It has its own tribute post in this blog so I won't go into lots of detail again, but I am still so pleased with the fact that I did each and every obstacle! I also found out 3 days after the race that I was pregnant, which helps explain why I felt so incredibly tired the whole time!
4) The Lititz Fall Blast was my first race after finding out I was pregnant. It was a HOT October day, and I thought my PR was 32:06, so when I saw my time was just under 32 minutes with 1/10 of a mile left, I did not push myself. I was upset when I looked back and saw that I really had a PR of 32:46 and totally could have beaten my time. So the following Saturday, after a rainy week, I woke up early to sunny skies and decided to go to a 5K some runners on Facebook had mentioned. I left Jeff and Landon asleep at the house and drove out on my own to try to PR, and I did!
5) Sticks and Biscuits and the Jingle Bell Run were two of the biggest races I did this whole year, and, although well-organized, lacked the space for the number of runners they had. At each of these races, there was absolutely zero opportunity to pass people until you were 3/4 of a mile into the race. There were lots of walkers for the whole race, and lots of kids, and it was impossible to get around others, which is why the time for S&B is quite slow.
6) The Jingle Bell Run's course was adjusted due to the 4 inches of snow we had received the day prior to the race. Instead of being 3.1 miles, it was approximately 2.85. As noted in #5, I couldn't get around ANYONE for the first mile in this race, and there were parts where the course was on a sidewalk that a snow-blower had made one path down, making it just wide enough for one person - no passing. This was incredibly frustrating, however it was also nice because it helped pace me at the start of the race. This led to my favorite moment of the entire year: RUNNING THE WHOLE RACE! This was the first time in my entire life I had ever run a full race, but it was one of my goals for the year, so I was thrilled when I accomplished it!
I am so incredibly proud of meeting some of my goals this year and look forward to meeting them again over the next two years!
