Bearathon 2013

On Saturday March 23rd I, Tamara AWESOMESAUCE Lehmann, completed my third half-marathon.

And it was spectacular.
Spec-freaking-tacular.

If you’ve been reading along you know I’ve been a little worried about the course. Because there are hills. Like, 5 miles of hills. And these aren’t little “Oh isn’t she precious” hills. These are “Sweet baby Jesus WHY!” hills. According to my Garmin watch, Elevation Gain was 700 ft. I mean, whaaa?

You can see how my pace slowed down during the hills too according to my splits. I tried not to focus on how I was going to conquer the hills (I was already nervous enough) so about mile 4 you see my pace slowed down, it was because I was prepping to figure out miles 5-10. I went with power-walking up the hills (like seriously swinging the eff out of arms and the ol’ hips) and running down. It worked out well for me. I think doing all the stair workouts this semester with Moj really helped me. So, if you have hills in your future and no real hills to train on, I suggest stairs. They’ll kill you but totally worth it.

My plan going into this race was just to finish. I assumed because the course was so much harder than my other two that I’d probably finish somewhere around 3 hours and 15 minutes. So, I was pretty pumped when my official time was actually :

I’m sure you remember all of my race times, (you guys are awesome friends!) but just in case you didn’t – this is the fastest I’ve ever ran 13.1 miles! Houston I finished in 3:00:27.

This means I totally PRed on the “Toughest Half in Texas” course.

Yep, you know a badass. Go ahead and let that soak in while I make an awkward race photo pose for you.

This particular race meant a lot to me because it felt as this was the start of my running journey when I completed the 5k portion of it last year. So, as I waited at the start line I was already tearing up before I even started running. I wanted to enjoy every moment of it. And I did. At every mile marker there was a water station, so to help Sar out with her Acts of Kindness, I clapped and cheered every one of those water stations volunteers. They didn’t have to be out there at 7am on a Saturday morning, and yet, there they were cheering us crazies on.

Speaking of Acts of Kindness, Sar was totally there cheering me on (as well as all the other runners!) around mile 11. It was definitely a huge boost since I was just coming off the hills. I also got to meet RP3 for a whole hot second. Like literally. I waved, he waved. We had a moment. Sorry Sar. It’s true.

At one point, someone chalked hopscotch out, I totally hop scotched my way into mile 9 I think. I also stopped at mile 10 I believe to let everyone know I was currently listening to Baby Got Back. I got big cheers on that one.

As I crossed the finish line, I started tearing up again and when I grabbed my medal/finisher shirt and free slice of pizza – I just sat down and soaked it in. I had finished. I had done something I never thought was possible – and I had enjoyed it. Alfred was out of town, Lillie was with her godparents and basically, I had no one at the finish line. But I didn’t care. I had done it and no one could take that away from me. I cried sporadically on the way home. And then when I walked in the house, I decided I wanted to record how I was feeling because I knew that the longer I waited the less emotional I would be. This feeling was something I wanted to remember.

Heads up, it’s a lot of rambling because I didn’t really give myself time to plan out what I was going to say.

Until we run again!