tow.com

Nineteen years ago, when I was just 14 years old, I ran the San Dieguito Half-Marathon in a time of 1:43, which translates to a 7:51/mile. I remember the weather was rainy and cold… I fell shivering into my Dad’s arms at the end of the race! Until yesterday, that was the first and last half-marathon.

On Sunday morning, inspired by all of these fantastic Olympic performances we’ve been watching in Beijing, Rae and I completed our own self-supported half-marathon. We ran our normal neighborhood route, to Wolfe Road in Cupertino, back to the house, and again our neighborhood route. Going at a fairly leisurely pace in perfect running weather, we completed the run in 2:04, or just under 10 minutes per mile. We stopped twice at the house to resupply our water bottles and were delayed at stop lights just a few times, bringing our total time out running to about 2:12.

I’m pretty happy with our performance, seeing that our longest run to-date this year has been 6-7 miles. Normally, we just do our 3-mile neighborhood run, so it was definitely a stretch to go 13.1 miles. The actual run went by a lot more quickly than I remember, but that’s probably because I had someone to talk to. That said, my legs today are a bit sore, so I won’t be running consecutive half-marathons any time soon!