Belated half-marathon update

I don't know why I never got around to blogging about this, but my friend just sent me a picture of us from the race which reminded me about it...

As you may recall if you're a regular reader, 48 hours before the race I had a cold and wasn't sure if I could run. But I got up that morning and felt pretty good, so M and I started the race out together. She was a little nervous. We were going at a pace that was a little slower than usual for me and a little faster than usual for her, but I felt good at the modest pace and decided to stick with it, and with M.

The race course for the Royal Victoria Half-Marathon is beautiful, through parks and charming neighborhoods and along the water. The weather was perfect, overcast and probably 58 degrees. I felt great for about 9 miles, and then my knee started to really hurt - an old IT band problem which I can generally keep under control with regular yoga, but I hadn't done a lick of yoga the whole week before and BOY was I regretting that by about kilometer 15. So, for the last 4K we had to do a mix of running and walking, which was a disappointment, but we finished and we finished together, which was very nice. We hadn't really expected to run the race together, since I'm usually a quicker runner. But at the end, when my knee hurt like hell and I told M to go ahead (since at that point she was having a fabulous race), she said Nope: we started together, we finish together. Which is pretty much the spirit in which we did the whole thing. We'd like to do another one sometime.

Enrico was, of course, the perfect support team, cheering us on at key points and meeting us at the end with dry clothes and taking a few pictures along the way. Speaking of which - here we are, still feeling mahvelous in the park at mile 6-ish.