Provo River 1/2 Marathon

Back in March of this year I publicly declared my goal to run in a 1/2 marathon at the end of the summer. I registered for a race on August 8th and have been training all summer. I had some good stretches of training and some times where I was less faithful.

Every single time I went for a training run I recorded the data on www.buddyrunner.com/jacob and also updated my status on twitter and facebook to keep myself accountable to my online community.

Yesterday was the day of the race and I'm pleased to report that I survived! This is without any question the longest distance I have ever run at 13.1 miles. I am sore everywhere and even a day later my legs still feel like jelly.

We had to meet at the finish line at 4:45am to be shuttled in school buses into Provo canyon up South Fork Road. Being on the first bus up I had to wait in the cold and dark for two hours until the race started at 7am. The whole course was beautiful and peaceful as we would through Provo canyon along the river.

I estimate that there were over 3000 runners and this was a different type of runner than I'm used to seeing in my 5K and even 10K races in the past. These were serious runners. No baggy basketball shorts, a lot of heart monitors, and GPS tracking watches.

My wonderful wife Ami, son Simon, and parents were at the finish line along with my sister Shannon and her family. It was really great to have so much support. They had watermelon, pancakes, and granola bars for the runners at the finish line, but my dad brought me a couple of snickers bars (that or he happen to have a couple on it at the time) and a good thing too because I was weak and famished.

I finished in 1 hour 52 minutes and 33 seconds which is about 25 minutes faster than I had hoped for. This put me in 502nd place overall and 32nd in my age group 25-30.

All around a very satisfying experience!