Race weekend began with packet pickup and the Expo being held at Nationals Stadium, which was very cool since I’ve never been there. Of course, there was no game going on that day. The expo itself seemed to be pretty small, but I don’t usually spend a lot of time looking around them anyway.
The race started at 7AM, and I was there around 6AM to meet one of my running friends also running that morning. I was really relaxed, since this was going to be my 5th half marathon and also one that I regarded as just a “training run” for Chicago. My plan was to run at training pace to avoid any injuries and just accept a finishing time over 2 hours. All of my previous ones have been under two hours.
It was perfect weather for a race. After the first mile, there seemed to be plenty of spacing between runners, and I started to just settle in and concentrate on keeping a steady pace. Usually I am more tense and more serious about a race, but knowing that I was not going to push too hard, I really just enjoyed the the scenery and things to look at all around me.
I finished at 2:06:19, which was fine for a training run. I did not feel very tired like I normally do when running for a PR! Best of all, nothing really hurt injury wise.
