The logical thing to do a week after running a full marathon is to run a half marathon a week later, right? Well apparently I thought so, because on Sunday morning I ran the B.A.A. Half Marathon in Boston! I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I scheduled these two giant races a week apart from each other (#dummy) but once I register for a race I just gotta go for it. No bailing!

The B.A.A. Half (and basically every event sponsored by the B.A.A.) has a huge field of participants, so instead of having everyone attempt to find parking around Franklin Park where the race was taking place, they offered several different shuttles to the starting line. This meant I had to be up and out the door by 5:30AM so I could get to the shuttle by 6:30 and get to the starting line before the gun went off at 8AM. I arrived at the race site around 7:30, which was the perfect amount of time to pick up my race t-shirt, drop my bag off at the gear check, and meet up with Louie and Rachelle before heading to the starting line.

The participant field was roughly 7,000 people, so it took a solid 7-8 minutes between the starting horn going off and the time we were able to even start moving and cross the starting line. The first few miles were super congested and a stop for a bathroom break added 10 frustrating minutes to mile 3 due to how many people were in line - oof! I managed to semi-makeup for the loss of time, though, as miles 4, 5, and 6 were all sub-9 minutes (I usually try to hang around 10 minute splits)! The rest of the race was pretty par for me the course when it comes to running halves. My pace hung around 10:30/11 in the later miles, but as I got closer to the finish and the crowds increased a bit I got a little energy boost and tried to push myself a little harder!

The last mile took us through Franklin Park Zoo which was so awesome! You could see the zebras, wildebeests, ostriches, cows, and a bunch of exotic birds which was a nice little motivator to push you across the finish line. This being the week after a marathon, though, my legs were really feeling it and the finish line could not come soon enough. As I rounded the corner of the Franklin Park track to the last straight away toward the finish I put everything I had left in me toward crossing the finish as quickly as I could and came across the finish line at 2:24:36. I know that if this race was scheduled for a different weekend I could have definitely done better, but I'm happy with my performance overall. It wasn't my best, but it wasn't my worst either, and at the end of the day I got to cross the finish line at catch one of those world famous B.A.A. unicorns!

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