The Philly Half Marathon

What an awesome course! The Philadelphia half marathon is probably the nicest race I’ve run. Virginia had some beautiful country scenery but Philly combined parks with city streets, and was relatively flat the entire way, which I was really grateful for. There were about 20,000 runners in all so it wasn’t quite as big as Vegas but much bigger than Virginia.

As usual, I laid all of my running gear out the night before and hardly slept Saturday night as my nerves got the best of me. I don’t know if the pre-race nerves will ever subside… I would have thought that by now (half marathon #4) I’d be a little calmer.. but no!

I only just beat my PR on this course… didn’t quite make it in the time I was hoping for but considering my Achilles tendon wasn’t feeling great at mile 10, I didn’t want to overdo it and I was happy to beat my PR at all. My official finishing time was 2 hours 11 minutes 31 seconds.

Recap of my half marathon races to date:

Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon December 5^th, 2010

• Time 2:12:54

Virginia Wine Country Half Marathon June 4^th, 2011

• Time 2:12:08

 

Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon December 4^th, 2011

• Time 2:12:16

 

Philadelphia Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon September 16^th, 2012

• Time 2:11:31

Even though I didn’t crush my PR as I had hoped to, I had a blast running this race. I ran it with my friend Nick, who kept pace with me until mile 10- impressive considering he hardly trained for this race 🙂   I usually run alone so it was a nice change to have a running buddy by my side for most of the race. Somehow, even though we didn’t sign up together, our bib numbers turned out to be sequential – it made looking up pictures and times much easier!

The finisher’s medal was pretty cool… although Virginia still takes the win for best medal since it has a wine stopper on the bottom of it!

 

Here are a few pictures from race day:

Here I am at around mile 4- still feeling pretty good!

Not sure at what point this is, but glad they got a smiling picture! 🙂

Here we are at the Rocky statue post race- still going strong! 🙂

Adam in front of the Art Museum

 

For the first time, I’m having to bounce right back into my training post half marathon. I usually take a few weeks to rest, but being as the full marathon is only 6 weeks away (Oh my god!), time is of the essence. I received my NY Marathon Registration form on Monday, so now I have my bib number, which is: 56442! I also found out that I’m in the last wave of runners so I won’t be crossing the start line until 10:55AM – great, plenty of time to get anxious!

What do you do to suppress nerves on race day ?