Half Marathon report, part 2

Eep! I completely forgot, until someone mentioned it to me, that I have yet to write up the second part of my half marathon report. Yikes, sorry! I'll make it short and sweet, and tidy up the lose ends here.
I met my friend, Julie, at the expo...she was the girl sitting looking through her race day goodie bag. I had never met her, but I recognized her from all the photos. I spotted her easy and walked up to her. We immediately smiled, hugged, and got all giddy! Here we were, surrounded by thousands of people who were equally hopped up on pre-race day adrenaline and we were meeting each other for the first time after being friends for the last 15 years! We walked around the expo for about an hour, chatted and got our photo taken in front of the race route, looked up our name on the print outs, picked up our T shirts (lame) and our free samples (Olive oil Julie?! lol), race bibs, and timing chip. Unless you really want to spend tons of money on "stuff" the expo really is a waste of time, imo. I thought it was ridiculous they made it "mandatory" for us to attend so I revolted by eating all the samples (energy bars, energy shots, drinks, etc, BEER!!!) and spending NO money. HA! I showed them. heh.
We decided that we both wanted to get back so we could each eat an early dinner and get a full nights sleep so we agreed to meet race morning around 5:30 am and hugged each other goodbye. L and I took the train back to the house (no funny stories as we were "pros" by this point) and ordered take out from a little place down the street. We were in bed by 8pm and even though I was keyed up beyond belief, was asleep by 9pm.
The alarm went off at 3:33am (good thing I sent two, because my first one didn't go off!!!) and I bolted up with major excitement. I ate half of a bagel with peanut butter, had a banana and drank almost a liter of G2. I woke L up and we proceeded to get dressed and ready. I pinned my bib number on, double, triple, and quadruple checked that I had all the necessities: chap stick, iPod, GU packets, safety pins, phone, and we headed out the door by 4:45am.

It was dark and quiet and admittedly slightly creepy. Luckily our 4 blocks we had to walk were uneventful until we made it up the train platform where a police cruiser came to an abrupt stop and officers got out of the car and yelled at some dudes on the corner to put their hands on their heads. Yikes. Before we knew it, we were on the L train headed downtown! Our first stop, there were only two of us marathon runners on the train with bib numbers on. Several stops later the train was PACKED to the gills with runners! It was so neat seeing everyone all geared up and excited, chatting it up about the race!
We got downtown, made our way through hundreds of people who were already getting their gear checked in, starting their stretches, and getting into placement. Once I found my friend at our corral, I made my way to the porta potties for my last pit stop, grabbed a bottle of water for a few last minute sips and headed back to our corral. The sun started to rise and before I knew it everyone was getting positioned. I kissed my husband goodbye, he told me good luck and that he was proud of me, took SEVERAL (hundred???) photos, and we were off to our starting spots. We did our warm up stretches and before long we were all packed in like a can of sardines.

The official time the race started was 6:30am, which is what time the first corral of runners took off. I kid you not, it took us 45 minutes to cross the START line. It was 7:15am by the time our group was able to get going. We were already hot, already sweating, already TIRED and we hadn't even started yet.

Finally, we were off and we took it s l o w. Unfortunately I injured my hip on my last trianing run and it never properly had the chance to heal before the half so here I was, running in already 80 something degree heat with a gimpy hip (did I mention I was lucky enough to also be on my period?! Wow!) and I was praying HARD that I would have the endurance to finish this race I had trained so hard for.
Miles 1 and 2 went fast, but I realized my Nike+ wasn't calibrated correctly and was reading my pace to be faster and my miles to be quicker. It wasn't off by much, but when it said I was already at mile 3 and we weren't yet, that was a real drag for the mental aspect. Can you say downer? It basically screwed us up our first several miles, but by mile 4 I really didn't give a crap, as I was already wanting to die from heat exhaustion anyway. My friend was feeling a surge of energy and I told to GO WITH IT. I didn't care that she went ahead of me beacuse my entire goal during this whole race was just to finsih. Time didn't matter to me. I gave her the go ahead and off she went! Good for her!

Mile 5 came and to my surprise my husband was on the sidelines looking for me! I waved him down and slowed to a walk so I could eat a GU packet. It was so great seeing him and getting a kiss from him! He took my photo and off I went again.I can't say that it really started sucking til mile 6. By this time my hip was burning and throbbing like I had never felt, it was hotter than hell (I swear it was hell), my clothes were already saturated heavy with sweat, and I couldn't quench my thirst no mater how many cups of Cytomax and water/ice I drank. I had been running with a girl who asked if she could keep pace with us during the first several miles and by this time we were fast friends and chatting, keeping each other going and sharing water (hey! when you are running 13 miles on a 86 degree day and nearly dying of heat stroke you don't care about sharing water with strangers, you're just grateful for it, let me tell you!!!). Nicole and I took it easy for awhile, walked a bit, ran a bit, and learned lots of things about one another. I was grateful for the company as, surprisingly, I got bored with my iPod.

I think it was mile 8 that we got separated due to some people in her family coming to run with her. I didn't mind running the rest of the race "solo" (aside from the hundreds of people all around me still) as it gave me time to focus and sort out my feelings. By mile 9 I wanted to kill someone, my legs and hips hurt so bad, but they hurt WORSE when I slowed to a walk, so I kept running, just way slow. At each water/ice station I'd take several cups. Two to pour over me, two to drink, and a cup of ice to chew on during the run. The ice was the best thing I had ever had...well until they started handing out wet cold sponges on mile 11. OMG was that heavenly!

Mile 12 and 13 were a near blur. I remember feeling faint but just kept telling myself I was almost there. I saw many people sitting on the side, laying down, nearly passing out, and even saw a few get taken in by med techs. The absolute worst mile was that last one. Not only was there a slight incline towards the end (by this point my legs were jello!) but there were no more water stations. I wanted this race to be OVER already and I just wanted to be out of all the pain. Many people were cheering on the sidelines that we were almost there, that the end was in sight and I started getting emotional and excited. I was really going to finish this race. I was really going TO DO THIS!!!

The last .1 seemed to take forever. Once I turned a corner I saw the finish line and nearly bolted outta my sneakers! I don't remember much, just looking at the clock and realizing that all the agony was about to end! I made it to the finish, went through a "tunnel" of high 5's and nearly wanted to collapse! There Julie was waiting for me, open arms, and teary eyed! We embraced and I totally broke down. My emotions came flooding like crazy and the tears started running. All I remember her saying was, "We did it! We did it! Chicago was a bitch to run in this heat and we did it!" She pointed to my husband and I immediately made my way over to him, where again, there were more tears! My husband was so relieved to see me as he thought something had happened to me as he stopped getting the auto text updates he was Supposed to be getting from the timing chip throughout the entire race. He thought the heat and my injury had prevented me from finishing and that I was somewhere on the sidelines. He was SO happy to see me and gave me many many MANY hugs and kisses!

I got my medal (proudest moment ever aside from childbirth!!!!), my ice cold towel to put around my neck, my 3 popsicles I eagerly slurped up, my two bottles of water and then we made our way over to the sprinklers! Ahhhh sweet Jesus!

We collapsed onto a shady piece of grass and I could already feel the soreness creep into every single muscle in my body. I was a hot sweaty mess, but a PROUD hot sweaty mess! I didn't want to move but knew if we didn't I never get up. Besides, we still needed to get back to the train, get back to the house, get packed and get back on the road to Nebraska.

Oh why did we plan such a rushed trip!!!!!