How I survived Gasparilla…

The gasparilla half certainly qualifies as an experience and a half. I didn’t train for it the way that I should have. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to run, let alone crawl the full 13.1 miles. Thankfully, I did. H and I did walk a little bit, but at the absolute most it was maybe a mile, probably more like a 1/2 mile.

The weather was horrible. It was very very windy as a cold front worked its way across the bay and the last six miles I ran in the rain. I figure it was all part of the adventure, but I’m not sure I’d go looking to run a race in the rain/wind again. Haha.

The race itself was eh. I thought the course was boring. It started in the dark, the streets didn’t really have street lights or anything, so that was weird. It also went in a circle and we ended up back at the beginning and then took a turn. I didn’t like having to pass the finish line at half way and know that I still had another 6 1/2 miles to run.

Exciting things: There was a guy running the full marathon who dribbled a basketball the entire time. Then there was another guy JUGGLING as he ran the whole marathon. Insane. Speaking of insane, H and I were getting bored and so H decided to sing the entire 99 bottles of beer on the wall song as we ran. Thankfully? or maybe unfortunately? It only took her about a mile and half to sing the whole thing.

During the out and back part on Bayshore I saw our TNT coaches. Actually, they saw us and called out my name. The surprise of someone cheering for me from the sidelines definitely gave me a needed boost of energy, especially since I had no idea how I was going to survive. Also, some nice stranger made little packets of pretzels and gummy bears and offered them to the runners. As we passed by, she offered pretzels and H and I passed them up, but she said gummy bears a second later and H made a U-Turn to go get herself some gummy bears.

Oh and I ran next to the marathon winner for .01 seconds. I was on mile 9 and he was on mile 20. Haha.

I crossed the finish line in a vertical position and actually ran into college friends and who had ran the race/supported their spouses. (ooh, so weird to say that!) I’m not sure I’d want to do Gasparilla again, the t-shirt was great, the expo was great, the race itself… eh. We’ll see though.

I ran a recovery run on Monday, thinking that it would help stretch out my muscles. Not so much. It definitely made things hurt so much more. I’ve been on a ibuprofen schedule for a couple days now.