Tom King Classic Half Marathon

Yesterday morning I ran the Tom King Classic Half Marathon.  It starts next to LP Field (where the Tennessee Titans play football), follows the Cumberland River with a good portion of the race on the Shelby Bottoms Greenway, and finishes inside the stadium.  The Music City Half Marathon that I ran in the fall followed much of the same route but didn't finish in the stadium.

The race started at 7:30 am so I was out of the house just as the boys were getting up.  It was warm yesterday (upper 60s by the afternoon) but still chilly this morning (low 40s).

The race is very flat (just one tiny, tiny hill and a few very short inclines), which helped me run my fastest half marathon every, by more than 4 minutes!  I finished with a time of 1:51:22 (which is 8:30/mile pace).  I finished 25th of 124 in my age category (30-34 females) and 380th of 1332 overall.

I'm really happy with my time!  Especially since I've run VERY little lately.  I've been doing the Insanity workout and am on my last week of it.  It's a nine week program with one rest day a week and one workout that is a recovery workout that you do once a week.  So I've been doing a 4 mile run on my off and recover days but that's all.  But Insanity is a killer workout (much, much harder than running) and I have more muscle than anytime I can remember.  I've also been calorie counting for 3 months so with that and Insanity, I've lost 17 pounds!  I've decided to stop "dieting" and see if I can maintain my weight.  Once I'm done with the Insanity program I plan on doing the workouts about 3 times a week and running the other days to try to maintain the muscle I've built.  Since it's warming up, I really want to do more running outside again.

And I'm really happy with how I did considering I had a Girls' Night the night before the race!  I got home late and even woke up with a headache from drinking more than I had planned.  But it was worth it because we played two rounds of the Left Center Right Dice Game and I won both rounds.  Crazy!!! I came home with a profit of $75!!! I had to explain why I came home with so many singles to Brian :)

Anyway, Brian brought the boys down for the finish of the race.  They got to go inside the stadium to watch the runners finish.  I'm the one of the right in this picture (grey shirt and black pants).

Brian tried to get my picture on the jumbotron as I was crossing the finish line but between trying to time it right and keep on eye on the boys, the picture ended up out of focus.  But I'm the runner on the right again :)

Apparently when they got there, Rylan was so excited because he thought he was going to see a football game.  Brian explained that they were going to watch me finish a race and Rylan accepted it.  But then after I finished and they had to leave the stadium, Rylan was not at all happy.  He still thought there was a football game to watch after I finished running.

I got a nice technical shirt (though when I signed up I somehow ordered a medium shirt and it's HUGE so I may never wear it), a finishers medal, and the timing chip with the race logo on it.

The race was well run and I'm sure I'll do it again.  Two of the other parents on Carter's soccer team ran the race too.  It sold out at 1500 people so it is obviously a popular race!