The Running Goober: Frederick Running Festival Half Marathon Recap

On Sunday morning May 4 we were up bright and early at 4:55 am for the Frederick half marathon. We went through our normal race morning routine of PB toast, a banana and some water, then headed to Frederick. It was quite chilly that morning so Em and I wore our throwaways that we had gotten for the WDW half (which we never used). Somehow we found two Ball State sweatshirts at Goodwill, which we thought was pretty funny. In fact, we still have them because it warmed up enough that we were ok in our skirts.

The start line was nuts! I ended up standing on the sidewalk until I could get onto the street once the race had started. After a few miles it had thinned out and wasn't an issue. The entire race was kind of a blur. I was definitely pushing my pace from the beginning. I used my run-walk intervals alternating between 4 minutes run-1 walk and 4:15 run-45 sec walk. The course was really beautiful and traveled all over Frederick. The one thing that really surprised me was just how hilly the course was. There was really only one steep hill, but lots of rolling hills. Looking at the elevation map before the race it seemed to be pretty flat so I didn't expect the hills at all. As the race went on it kept getting hotter and hotter. By a little after 9 am when I finished it was brutally hot!

My favorite thing about this race was the crowd support. The people of Frederick were out and about everywhere to cheer! I have never seen so many supportive/funny race signs. They definitely kept me entertained and encouraged along the way. There were kids outside of their houses handing out gummy worms, gummy bears and jelly beans and they seemed to be having the time of their life watching the race. One neighborhood we ran through set up their own water station which I thought was really nice.

Once I hit mile 12 I stopped my intervals and ran the rest of the way to the finish. At about mile 12.5-12.9 there was a huge hill that we ran during the 5k. What a change in perspective, running it after running two miles and then running the same hill after running 12.5 miles. The latter was not so fun. The struggle was real, but I made it up without stopping.

When I finished I almost immediately found my cousin Troy who also ran the half and PR'd by 21 seconds. We stood there and chatted for awhile waiting for Cameron and Em to finish. This was Cameron's first half and he just needed a half finish time for corral placement for the Goofy Challenge in January so I figured he would just be taking it easy. Little did we know that Cameron had already been done for quite a long time. Cameron finished in 1:49:59!!!! He lifts weights almost everyday, does cardio and had been running some before this race, but the only long run he did was a 12-miler with me a few weeks before. When I found out how fast he had run I told him, "I'm really happy for you, but I'm also frustrated." All the training I had put in and he made it seem like it was so easy to run a half marathon. He's ridiculous and awesome all at the same time!

I ended up finishing in 2:02:10. At first I was a little disappointed because deep down I wanted to go sub-2. I was 50 seconds away from it at the Reach the Finish Line Half. The cards were stacked against me in this race (the weather, lots of rolling hills on the course, aching/tired/over trained legs). I'm ok with it now and know there will be other races for me to attempt to PR. I'm just happy with finishing close to that 2 hour mark.

Post-race there was a ton of food and drinks! The handed out bottles of water at the finish and then had Gatorade in cups on tables. There were volunteers slicing fruit for you to take (bananas, oranges, apples) and they also had chips and granola bars. We took some pictures and headed to the car. We stretched for awhile and then headed home. Usually I have some crazy cravings post-race, but this time around I hardly had an appetite at all and had to make myself eat.

The medals we got were so heavy (which is awesome)! They're really close in weight to my Disney Half medal. The only thing I was mad about was the half marathon relay medals had the Maryland flag on the strap in the traditional colors and the half marathon medals had a blue MD flag pattern.