Rock N Roll San Jose Half Marathon

Race #2 is now completed... thank GOD! At 2:00 on Saturday Phil, Karen, Rocky, Claudia, Patch and I met up at Karen's house to start our mini road trip down to San Jose. Even with a bunch of traffic, we got there fairly quickly and went straight to the hotel to check into our digs for the night. Next we were off to the EXPO to grab our race stuff. The EXPO was pretty cool... this being a Rock N Roll event, they had A LOT of RNR SJ merchandise, which we couldn't resist. It's cool to have something that says you were a part of the inaugural event! After the EXPO we headed around the corner for a pasta dinner at Ill Fornaio. Even though we found out that I had made the reservation for the wrong weekend (way to go!), the manager was able to fit us in :D

Sunday morning was got up around 5:45 to start getting ready. Claudia (our cheerleader for the day with Patch) drove us down to the start line. I had anticipated San Jose being a fairly cool race since it was the beginning of October and the weather had started cooling down. But already at 7:00 it was starting to warm up. Waiting around to get corralled, we ran into a bunch of other TNT people who were also doing the race. Around 7:45 we headed to our corral-- Rocky, Phil and I decided to stick together and all went to corral 10. The three of us planned to stick together for about a mile, then stop and stretch before Rocky took off. Once we started, I had to go pee (I need to stop bringing water with me to the start... I keep needing to pee after the race starts, now matter how much I go before!) so we decided to run to the next set of porta-potties (around mile 2) and pee/stretch there. Because we were running with speedy Rocky, Phil and I ran those first two miles a little too quickly-- I was drenched by the time we got to mile 2!

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. The course isn't ugly (we actually ran by some gorgeous houses) there just isn't really anything exciting to look at. The bands along the course were great but in between the bands we didn't see many spectators. We saw Claudia and Patch a couple of times along the course-- they were our cheerleaders and race support! They were a welcome sight, especially around mile 9 when I needed my bottles refilled! THANK YOU CLAUDIA!! The dreaded hydrant water that is used at all RNR races wasn't as bad as we had anticipated but our nice bottled water was much better!

Mentally this was such a hard race for me... even with the misters along the course the heat totally sapped my energy and it was so hard to keep running. Towards the end I was stopping more and more for short walking breaks. Phil was a champ and stuck with me, even though I kept telling him he could go ahead without me! And thankfully he did stay... I think I would have walked much more if I were by myself. The last mile was probably the hardest one I've ever run in a half marathon... I didn't even have enough juice in me to sprint the last .1 mile to the finish line! Our final time was 2:41:39... only 7 minutes more than Disney. When you factor in the potty stop and bottle refilling stops with Claudia, the times were about the same... SJ just seemed so much harder! Afterwards I felt ill-- nauseous, chilled and light headed... I think I just neede more sodium because once I had some gatorade I felt much better. :D

The medal we got at the end was nice... we also got a comfy pair of SPENCO sandals, and ice water drenched towels to cool us off. After we all showered and checked out, we rewarded ourselves with a yummy lunch at In N Out :D Next race is in two weeks... the weather should be much more runner-friendly so I'm hoping to beat my past two half marathon times!