Publix A1A Half Marathon

Yup That is how cold I was!!!

I kinda waited till last minute to sign up for this race and when I finally did, surprise, none of my friends wanted to do it with me….so this was yet another lone race in 2013. It seems to be becoming a trend!

I was there nice and early so I didn’t have to worry about parking and called my mum at 5 am to bother her to keep me company since no one else was awake and anyone besides her would have just hung up on me and ignored me when I called back. LOL

But seriously, it must have been the coldest it has EVER been in Florida in February! OMG I was already frozen before the race even started. Everyone was huddled around and dressed in “Floridian winter running apparel”. All I had was a pair of long SKIN pants and a little sleeveless jacket on and I didn’t take the jacket off the entire race. People were walking around with plastic trash bags on trying to keep out the blistering cold, maybe for you folks up north high 30’s is nothing…laughable, but for us poor tropical people, that is just rude weather! 

Once the race started, I though, foolishly that it would warm up…haha, I was stupid wrong. As soon as we got to A1A the wind and sand whipping off the ocean made it even colder! I wanted to die, I couldn’t feel my noes by the time I hit the 3^rd mile marker, but I think the cold made me run faster. 

The race went up and down A1A and also around Huge Taylor Park, which was really nice. But when we hit mile 4…I had to pee. I have never had to pee in a race before and I am SO not a big fan of porter potty’s. They are filthy and disgusting, so I figured I would just go ahead and hold it….and I did…until I got to mile 8. That is right, I held it for 4 MILES, but I couldn’t hold it any more and I started looking for a potty that I could just run into really quickly and then run out, but for the next mile, EVERY single porter potty I passed had a line outside of it. I think the cold made everyone have to pee! It was horrible, so I am running along, making GREAT timing BTW and finally just after mile 9 I see a free porter potty and I DIVE into it. I must have taken the longest pee on record. I am squatting over the disease infested hole, praying to god that nothing gross is living in there and hoping nothing splashes back up onto my precious behind. As I squat I stare at my watch…and watch the seconds…and then MINUTES tick by as I continue to pee. WTH right, who pees that long? Apparently this girl! I peed for just over 2 minutes and all I am thinking during that time, besides oh god I hope nothing gets on my ass, is damn it dame it, I was making such good time! CRAP! How I am going to pick it up and finish strong! 

Well with an empty bladder I came barreling out of the craproom and picked up the pace. Thanks to the frozen ocean wind whipping my face and the inability to feel the pain in my feet because they officially went numb around mile 7, I managed to pound it out and finished much better than I expected! I broke my half marathon record and came in with a NEW PR of 1:53:12 and actually was 25th in my age group! That may not sound awesome to you hard core runners, but I was THRILLED with myself, and I got to enjoy it all alone. Well, to be fair, one of my friends did show up at the finish line to cheer me on and join me for HOT TEA and a mimosa afterwards. 

 

I had a great time doing this race, but the one thing I must say is the medals…they were all broken. I got one at the finish line and by the time I walked to get water it had broken so I went back and asked for another one, which they gave me and it was also broke. Later on Facebook, I saw I wasn’t the only one that got a jackedup medal and they did promise to replace them. We shall see!  

So my next race is the Spartan Race, it will be #7 of the year. Last year I had only done about 3 races by the time I did the Spartan Race and I died, but this year I plan on crushing it! I have been training hard…got myself nice and fit; I am ready to do this! I may not be as ripped as those crossfit girls, but baby, I got me cardio! J