Last Sunday I ran the Parker River Half Marathon and spoiler alert: I PRed!!!! This was my second half (read about my first here) and I haven’t run this distance in over 3 years. What was I thinking?

The Parker River half Marathon is a USATF Certified 13.1 course but I apparently didn’t run the tangents right because I clocked the course at 13.49. That’s almost a 1/2 worth of extra running. Ugh!

Parker River Half Marathon {Race Recap}

I joined my studio’s run club back in May in hopes to get into a better running routine. It worked. I fell back in love with running (especially long runs) after three years of being out of love.

Throughout training for this race, I wasn’t even sure I was going to participate until the week before. I signed up for the race a mere 8 days before race day. Turns out, it was a good decision.

Pre-Race Fuel

The Parker River Half Marathon start, finish and parking was only a 10 minute drive from my house so a SUPER early alarm was not needed. I got up just after 6:00 am and drank some water and ate a Larabar.

Larabars worked for me during training so I knew I would be ok eating one 90 minutes before race time. Along with the water and bar, I had roughly 2-4 oz of cold brew coffee just plain. I didn’t want to overdue it on the caffeine but wanted a little something.

Parker River Half Marathon

Now onto the race. The gun went off exactly at 8:00 am and I was off running.

Mile 1 – 8:56

Mile 2 – 9:12

Mile 3 – 9:17

I treated the first 3 miles as my warm up. I tried to keep it slow because this was a long race and it was HOT out already. Luckily, there was a good amount of shade for this section.

Mile 4 – 9:21

Mile 5 – 9:46

Mile 6 – 9:57

At mile 6 I ate my first energy chew. I prefer these over energy goo because the consistency of the goo makes me want to gag and die.  I’m a very salty sweat-er and found that the Clif Salted Watermelon chews to work for me.

Mile 7 – 10:18

Mile 8 – 10:25

Mile 9 – 9:48

Where did my mile 9 pace come from? I ate another chew somewhere between mile 9 and 10 and it must have given me a little boost.

Mile 10 – 10:05

Mile 11 – 10:17

Mile 12 – 10:52

During mile 11 I ate my final chew for the race.

Mile 12 through me a little curve ball and for 1/4 – 1/2 mile we went off road. WTF?! Don’t you think they should mentioned that? At that point, I just focused on not tripping over rocks or potholes and just tried to keep moving.

Mile 13 – 11:24

By the time mile 13 came around, I was out of steam. Hence the 11+ min/mile.  This was a very boring, non-shady part of the course and my lower back and calves were throbbing.

Last .48 miles – 10:08

Haha – all my pains seemed to fade away as I came into the finish.

RunKeeper Stats: 13.49 miles // 2:14:37 // 9:59 min/mile

Official Race Time: 13.1 miles // 2:14:34 // 10:15 min/mile

As you can see, these times an distances are a little off from one another. But either way, its a PR for me! I ran my last half marathon in 2:16:10 and had to walk parts of it. No walking this time and I finished strong!

Finish Line

These girls all crushed the Parker River Half Marathon and most of all, I am so happy to have met each of them and run with all of them.

I was really proud of my results and the fact that I actually got up early on a Sunday morning and ran for over 2 hours.

Linking up with Wild Workout Wednesday…

Related posts:

Twin Lobster Half Marathon {Race Recap} My 2nd Half Marathon Summer Half Marathon Training – Week 7 Summer Half Marathon Training – Week 5