Brooklyn Half Marathon 2016 Recap

On Saturday, May 21st, I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon for the 4th consecutive year — and for the 4th consecutive year, I had a great race, thankfully! Feeling oh-so-good that it’s over and that it went so well, since I really didn’t commit to any sort of training for this race and just ran when I could and as much as I felt like for the past month, but it all worked out and my no-stress approach to training seems to suit me just fine.

Brooklyn, you always do me so good.

You know how some experiences seem to just fly by — how even while you’re in the midst of them and trying to stay present and hold on to the moment and tell yourself that this is it, the shining thing you’d been waiting for, and you want to feel it as fully as you can, they still just seem to slip away so quickly and you can hardly recall ever having been in the thick of it? That’s the best way I can come up with to describe how I felt during this year’s race. Maybe it was because I’ve done this 3 times prior and knew exactly what to expect, and was having those weird deja vu moments where I couldn’t tell the difference between last year’s race and this year’s…but the whole thing just seems sort of a blur to me. I wasn’t necessary excited, and I had no nerves at all, and while I enjoyed it, I was glad when it was over and didn’t really experience any of those “OMG MY LIFE IS AMAZING” moments that I did when running a full marathon.

Physically, I felt great from start to finish, save for a tight IT band that was annoyingly achy but not unbearable. I was conscious the entire race that I was running at a comfortable pace and knew I could pick it up and push myself, but I was happy where I was. I knew I hadn’t trained for this (one 12-miler a few weeks ago but otherwise nothing over single-digits in a long time),  I didn’t have any set time goal in mind, and I wanted to feel good throughout it and afterwards, so I stuck to what felt comfortable and decided this wasn’t the day to risk pushing my limits. Quite honestly, I wanted to enjoy my run, celebrate with the boy (who ran his first half!) afterwards, and feel good enough to go right to brunch and then out to a nice dinner later on. Sometimes a long run really effs with my stomach, so I was determined not to let that happen. I wanted to enjoy this whole day.

& in case you’re wondering, I’m completely happy with my time!

1:53:21 and an overall gender placement of 2,556 out of 14,717 women suits me just fine. 🙂

And the boy, well…he crushed his first half and ran a 1:45 like it was a walk in the park. I’m so proud (& a teeeensy bit envious!) of my amazingly athletic man!

The Brooklyn Half truly is a terrific race, from organization & ease of runner experience to course layout to spectator enthusiasm to iconic finish line on the Coney Island boardwalk. It’s also a really inspiring race to run, as it’s become the biggest and most popular half marathon in the USA and had 27,410 finishers this year! You’re basically running shoulder-to-shoulder with people the whole time, but it’s so awesome to see all the different runners and teams (and fun capris!) and so many people pushing themselves to achieve the status of a 13.1 finisher. I love that aspect of this race.

Also, I saw a girl in my corral wearing these pineapple capris, which made me really happy.

I won’t lie — isn’t checking out other runners’ attire one of the most fun aspects of running a race? We saw a few people with a shirt that said “I thought this was a 5K” on the back, which was pretty sweet as well.

Congrats to everyone who ran BK this weekend! I always love how great a long race feels when it’s over (and you get to eat all the food and take all the naps). 🙂

Runners: Do you have a fave race you run annually?
Tell me a highlight from your weekend!

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