WELL, I completed the Kansas City Half Marathon, did NOT PR, BUT that is OK. This was a great race, very well organized overall. My only suggestion is that they implement the corral system at the start. When 12k people are trying to get through the start line, it's kind of a hassell BUT we was warm waiting!
So, I got to the race about 45 minutes early so I could meet the BGR! Kansas City ladies for pictures. Traffic was so hectic and my mom was dropping me off. Well I decided to get out and walk to Crown Center since it was so backed up. Once I got inside the building, I realized quickly that I forgot my GARMIN!!!!! I was in total panic mode because that is my life there, BUT then I calmed down and told myself "you got this" because I have done 5 prior to this one and I know what to do. I am just so use to knowing my heart rate during races as well as having the watch keep me on track with my intervals. SO, I ended up using RunKeeper which was a disaster!!!
So back to meeting the ladies......I finally got into Crown Center and met up with the ladies. All of them were so nice and made me forget about missing my Garmin. We headed out to the start line about 10min before the race started and it was such a hassell getting in line with the others because it was so congested and the times were just not as visible as they should have been. I ended up getting split up from them, but that was ok because I was running at my own pace.
Here comes 7:16am, 11 min after the race started and it was time to rock and roll. The first mile was a steady incline, nothing that I couldn't do because I trained hills! Now my plan was to do negative splits, but it was just too difficult looking at my times with runkeeper and putting the phone back on my arm, so throughout the entire race I had to restart runkeeper. I had no clue what mile I was on or my pace. I saw my mom around mile 3.5 and then I saw her again around mile 7.5 which at that time, I gave her my jacket because I was hot! Remember I kept restarting runkeeper so I didn't have an accurate count of my time and at that point it didn't matter...I just wanted to finish.
Around mile 9 I ran into my sisters classmate from college and she had an injury which caused her to fall. She didn't want me to run with her and I asked several times, so I stayed very close to her to make sure she was ok. Again, PR was not my focus anymore because not only did this hilly course slow me down, but I didn't have my GARMIN! So, I hit mile 11 which was downhill for the most past....I tried to make up some time and then I ran into the 2:50 pacers around mile 12. I kept up with them until the last .50 mile when I lost energy. Oh, let me back track for a second, around mile 11 I had a cramp in my right calf, but I pushed through and popped my SALTSTICKS which helped. I stayed hydrated and made sure I had my REHYDRATE & SLAM made by ADVOCARE with me plus I stopped at almost every water stop which was 2 miles apart.
So finally it was the homestretch, but of course there was gradual incline and then it flattened out to finish. I ended up finishing around 2:49 per the pacers, but the time said 2:55 so I will take it and be happy. The good thing is I finished strong, I had energy after and I got my BLING!!!
Post-race party was great. Chick Fil A was handing out free sandwiches which I ate about half of that because for some odd reason after races I am just not that hungry! Anyways, I stayed around about an hour, took lots of pics with my family and friends & went home to eat, shower & rest!
KC Marathon was a success and I will do this race again!
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