Olathe Half Marathon - The Story

I am sorry for not updating everyone on my Olathe Half Marathon sooner. We are getting ready to list our house so my evenings have been full of unpackings, de-cluttering and of course normal evening chores.

I ran the half marathon last Saturday. My time was 2 hours and 22 minutes with an overall pace of 10:44. It was great and easy. This was also the biggest race I have ever been apart of. All of the races I have done until this one have been only a couple hundred of people. Sometimes I have even placed in my age group, because I was one of the few in my age group. That is going to happen less often since I turned 30 and there are plenty of women 30-40 year old runners. Back to how many people there were I first started in a group faster than I should have been so everyone quickly passed me but I fell into a comfortable pace that I knew I could handle.

One thing about Kansas is that it is humid. I wore capri running pants. I wanted to wear shorts but since Gunnison is cold I have not done a long run in shorts or my running skirt so I went with what I knew would work. At one point I was sweating a lot. I sweat a little bit in Gunnison, but I was sweating more than I ever do in Gunnison.

Around mile 4ish I had to pee and there was a aid station coming up but the line for the porta potty was 4 people deep and I did not want to wait, so I headed into some trees. It saved me some time.

At mile 7 I was getting hungry. Due to driving late at night and go, go, go the next day with family I was really tired the night before and the race started at 7am. I got up at 5am - good thing for moms because when the alarm clock went off at 5am I turned it off so it would not wake Joe up and fell back asleep. The point of my story is that I did wake up super early and I really did not want to eat my normal ceral and peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I had the cereal but no sandwich. At mile 9 they had run out of gatorade but I also saw a women I worked with at McDonald's back in highschool!

I was able to fuel up at the next aid station. Around mile 10 I was getting sore in my hips and I even walked a little bit and stretched some. Finally at mile 11 I told myself that I only had 2 miles left so let's do it. I picked up the pace as much as possible and crossed the finish line strong.

One thing that I do love about finishing is that Mikayla comes out from the crowd and we run across the finish line hand in hand.

Lily and my nephew, Jake, waiting for me to finish.

My sister, Sara, and her husband, Josh looking for me.

Here is my sister, Sara, and me and the girls. My sister ran her first 5K. She ran it at a pace of 10:55, and finished around 34 minutes. She did great.


Instead of me eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Lily did.

I had a great time, I saw parts of Olathe that I never saw as a kid. I would do this race again.