and so it begins...

a couple saturdays ago i completed my first race of the year. it was a half marathon that i admittedly did not train very much for. i was hoping that since i had run a marathon last year, and kept my miles up after that, i could just hop into a half marathon without a lot of training. believe it or not, i was right! yay for being one of those guys for the first time in my life. besides my normal weekly runs, i ran a ten miler a few weeks before the race and called it good.

about a year and a half ago, emily and i were in a local running store looking at shoes when we met one of those guys. we brought up the fact that we'd be running our first half marathon in less than a few weeks. i'll never forget what the associate working said after he heard us talking about that half. he asked us, "so what half are you two running?" we told him and he said, "oh wow...that's not too far away. that sounds great. i think i might do that one, too." my thoughts, "ummm....you think you might run 13.1 miles in less than a few weeks? just like that!?! don't you need to train?!" i literally remember being aggravated with this dude because he could "hop into" a half marathon apparently at any point.

this recent half marathon was really cool because i had the opportunity to help a friend run a sub 2:00 race. he had never run one before and that was his goal. i loved it! i'd say for the average rec runner a sub 2:00 is a high goal to set...so naturally i was inspired by his aggressive goal setting.

the race went great and we paced well. we chatted while we ran to distract ourselves and made some jokes here and there. honestly, i don't get to run with someone too often so it was pretty refreshing to be able to race next to someone. i'll admit it though...i felt a ton of pressure to get that dude sub 2:00, but we managed to finish in 1:53:37.

onto the next race of the season. my first triathlon in 62 days 15 hours 32 minutes and 44 seconds. YIKES!