Nationwide Columbus Half-Marathon

Sunday morning, I awoke at 545AM to begin pre-race preparations.  I wasn’t running myself, but my fiancée Jamie was running her first ever half-marathon.   We drove to Columbus and stayed the night at the home of my best friend in the whole world, Willie.  And, on Saturday afternoon about a half-hour after we arrived, Willie had a surprise for us.  My dad came up to visit and support Jamie too.  We had a great team rallying around Jamie as she awoke at 6AM and began her own pre-race preparations which were much more serious than mine. (she actually had to run 13 miles).

We drove to the race site and got stuck on 670 for a bit on our way to the race, and so at 710AM, Jamie hopped out of the car to ‘warm up’ by running to the starting line (and insuring that she would be able to be there in time for the start).  I proceeded to drive the car to the parking garage, and amazingly, I made it to the starting line in time to see her off.  (Turns out that her wave of the race started close to 745 instead of 730AM).  At that point Willie and my dad drove up about two blocks away, picked me up, and we made it to the first of three stops along the route to cheer Jamie on.

It was utterly amazing to see the turn-out for this race.  15,000 people ran in the race, and there was literally a continuous stream of runners along the route.  In fact, Jamie had nearly passed us before we saw her from the first vantage point (mile 4) along the race route.  We tried to track her using the tracker function on the marathon website, but we couldn’t get it to work.   At mile 9 we fared much better, and even got a couple photos.  All along the route, Jamie maintained good form and totally rocked the race.   In fact, Jamie started the race awesomely well, and ran her fastest 10K ever during the first part of the race.

The marathon as a whole was pretty stellar too.  The route took participants all through the city, and there were dozens of bands and live music all along the way.   The city was filled with energy and thousands of spectators gathered along every part of the route.  

Jamie has been training since late this summer with two of her friends, and all three of them completed the race well. She finished the entire race in about 2 hours, and I am soooooo proud of her!  She set a goal, she disciplined herself to run on many occasions when she didn't feel like it, and she totally crushed it!