I was caught a little off-guard by tears right before the start. We had been chatting pretty continuously before the start, but the silence of the national anthem let my mind wander for a bit to think about how Casey would usually get me an encouraging card before races. We had some really great trips to races although we only actually ran together for his first ever half marathon. Confronting the reality that we will never go to a race together again and I'll never even get another card again was hard.
Last year when I ran with Katie I had my Garmin set for 20 second walks every 1/4 mile. I just had my Apple watch today and didn't bother setting intervals, just decided to go by feel. We didn't walk until over 2 miles in and only walked a handful of times. I let her call all the walk breaks. Surprising thing is that this year with better weather was 3 minutes slower than last when we walked so much. Crazy how that works. This year did feel a lot stronger. Almost don't want to mention as it sounds like weird bragging, but I quite literally didn't break a sweat. My heartrate hung out in the 130-165 range for the entire race though so there was some cardio going on there. This three hours FLEW by. My legs were feeling pretty stiff towards the end and my feet were a tad uncomfortable, but otherwise felt good. Not that I recommend running half marathons with almost no training, but this experience feels encouraging to me to be able to run and feel so good.

Probably not accurate to blame Casey's passing in March for my almost utter lack of training, but that whole situation certainly didn't help. I literally did one 7 miler the weekend before he died, one 5 miler in May and two 3 milers this month. It was interesting that the women's overall winner in the full marathon was 46 years old. Maybe my fastest days are ahead for me rather than behind?

I was hobbling pretty good so did an epsom salt bath when I got home that actually seemed to help a lot.