"I don't really get it, but whatever." -Ryan Hall on running

So, as most people who read this/talk to me should know, I had my first big adult race last Sunday. I had decided to complete a half marathon over the break, and I started training for this thing way back in January. I went from running 6-7 miles a week to pushing 20 a week. It was a lot of work, and most of the time I never actually believed I could actually finish a half. But spoiler alert: apparently I can! Whoop!

Farmland at sunrise, just north of Adelaide

The race was to start at 8:30 and all the hostel rooms were booked for the night before, so I had to leave Adelaide early in the morning. My friend Chris picked me up at 6:40 and we headed north to Barossa Valley. However, due to someone not fully understanding his directions, we ended up taking the route to Flinders' Ranges and had to backtrack. I was stressing. We got to the race about 15 minutes early, but (of course) the line for the women's bathroom was way too long and so I only got a 2-minute warm-up before starting the race.

Tired and unhappy at the long line for the bathroom.

I made it to the line right before 8:30 and we started running. There were a lot of people in the race- at final count, there were times for about 660 runners. People always warned me to start off slow for the first 5k or so, and man that was hard. There were people all around me, and everyone wanted to go fast. I tried my best to stay steady- there was a pacer for a 2:00:00 time and so I just tried to stick with that.

After a few kilometers, though (or maybe 2, I don't remember), pacing myself got boring. I had taken one of those sugar/caffeine gels before the race and I was revving. So I passed the pacer and just started to go for it- the last thing I wanted to do was finish the race feeling like it wasn't too bad. The course was already really flat and so I wanted to push myself.

So I did, and my gosh it got difficult by the end. I started to hurt around kilometer 16, but I was not going to slow down or stop. So I turned the final 5k into a race. And then I kicked it for the final kilometer. Which was entirely uphill. And I wonder why I was so sore the next two days...

But I made it! And I beat my goal time by 8 1/2 minutes. Boom. Mission accomplished.