Marine Corps Half Marathon vs. Erin Brown

So, as promised, here is an update on my experience with the Marine Corps Half Marathon this weekend.

Diane and Me before our races! - Notice the super cool headbands!

The race started bright and early – and I mean really early. We stayed in hotel very close to the starting line, and at 4:45am the music started blasting. (If I were just a normal hotel guest, I would have been angry!!) Since we were running, it wasn’t too big of a deal. The race started off right on time at 7am. It was extremely well organized, and I was over the starting line in about 5 minutes. I was in corral group time 2:30-3:00, so I was pretty far back. It was impressive how organized the event was. I was doing great until about mile nine. I wasn’t overly winded, even tho the course was challenging with lots of hills, and I was actually thinking I might beat my PR, which is 2:34. That was, until I stopped for a bathroom break…surprise surprise (ha, not!). Not exactly sure what happened, but once I stopped and restarted I got really bad cramps right above my knees. This is something I’ve never experienced before, so I didn’t really know how to handle it. I continued a run/walk combo for the rest of the race. Basically I would run until my legs started to buckle, stretch for a minute to two, walk it off and then try and run again. As you can imagine, beating my PR went out the window. In fact, I was happy I was even able to finish it (for a while it wasn’t looking good)… Matt and Diane were waiting at the end cheering for me, even tho I was moving really slow, so it ended on a positive note!
All in all I was a little disappointed with myself. I’ve been training a lot and was hoping to do better. But that’s OK, next time I will do some alternate training for hills and I will make sure to stretch the muscles I must not have this time.

Like I said before, the race was extremely well put together. I think we all had a really great time, even if beating PR’s didn’t happen. I would absolutely recommend this race, but be sure to train for hills!

Marine Corps Half – 1
Erin – 0

Next year, watch out!