First Ever Half Marathon

So this past weekend marked my first ever half marathon race and it was everything I expected it to be and more! To be 100% honest, I surprised myself by running the entire distance without stopping, and I beat my goal time by almost 7 minutes! Everyone that knows me knows how competitive I can be, but I've never ran for longer than 10 miles at a time so I had my doubts about making the jump to 13.1. Turns out, the extra motivation from friends and family, all the runners, and a beautiful backdrop for a race helped tremendously and I felt like I could have kept running!
It was such an awesome feeling of accomplishment to complete something as grueling as running for almost 2 straight hours. I know it's not a full marathon but you have to start somewhere, and I feel like the full marathon may be the next step. The sights and sounds of the race were amazing and the support of the crowd is something you just can't describe until you've seen it and felt it for yourself. Everyone is running individually but you can feel a sense of 5500 people pushing each other to do their best, no matter how fast or slow they are. It was so inspiring to see the different types of people running for the same goal which is to test yourself and finish with pride.
I also ran the race with two new weapons...compression socks and shorts. This was a game changer! And thank you to my wife for buying them for me cause they really do work as advertised. My legs and feet normally start to get that numb tingly feeling during long runs over 6 miles, but not yesterday. Not at all. My legs had increased circulation and felt fresh the entire race, and due to lack of muscle vibration with the compression I had a lot less muscle fatigue. The best part is that I'm really not even sore today which is crazy because earlier last week I ran 6 miles and my calves were sore for three days! So in my opinion the compression technology is not at all overhyped; if anything, it's way underused and if you're into running long distances or have trouble recovering from workouts, get a pair of compression socks and compression shorts, you'll thank me later!
Last and certainly not least, I wanna say how awesome my wife is for her support during the race. She was so positive and filled my head with confidence from the time my training began until the end of the race. Not only did she get up at O'Dark Thirty to get to the race on time with me, she made a sign, ran all over downtown in order to track my progress during the race, and caught a cab to make it back to the stadium for the finish inside Petco Park! She had my whole family tracking my progress online with the run tracker attached to my bib so they could "watch" me run! She is such an inspiration to me and loves me whole heartedly so I want her to know how much it means to me when she does stuff like that. She's the real reason I beat my time by 7 minutes.
So I will end by saying this, I had so much fun this weekend and urge everyone to push themself to trying something out of their comfort zone cause you never know, you might shock yourself...it's a great feeling.