Oh, yeah, the Austin Half

I meant to post an Austin Half Marathon recap, but that got pushed way off my list, I'm afraid.

Before the race. This was taken seconds
after Chadwick asked if I had lost my
mind. The photographer stopped us as
we were headed to gear check and asked
if we wanted our picture taken.
(Also, this is not a copyright violation.
Our dear friend Ruth bought our race
photos for me in lieu of flowers. I'm free
to use this image here.)

Here's the gist: they went back to an older version of the course, similar to the one I ran in 2009 and 2010, and I loved it. Every inch of it, except for the pretty boring stretch on Lake Austin Boulevard where there's not a lot of crowd support and also not a lot of interesting things to look at. I mean, I love trees as much as the next gal, but even I can only be enraptured by so many before wanting to see something else. (Here's the course map, for the extra-curious.)

It's weird, thinking about that day now. I didn't run with Chadwick-- he wasn't trained for it, so he started the race planning to DNF at about mile 2, which is exactly what he did--but we spent the rest of the day together. I don't remember what we talked about. I don't think we did anything else but run a race and then sit on a couch. And get some In-n-Out.

Before the race, though, when I was in pre-race crazy mode, he asked me if I had lost my mind, and I asked him if he'd forgotten what I'm like on race day. It had been a while since we'd stood at a start line together.

My next race is the Cap10K in April, and I'll be running it alone.

Anyway, the half marathon medal this year was really ugly, by usual Austin Marathon standards. The day that Chad died, a bunch of the younger folks from church came over and spent the evening in my living room, and we passed around the medal. Some of them didn't believe that it was ugly until I got out one of my old ones by comparison, and then they obliged my feelings by making fun of the ugly one.

I haven't decided yet what I'll do with the race medals and numbers Chad managed to collect over the years. I have some ideas. But I'm not in a hurry to make that decision. They are made of durable metal, and I have faith that having lasted in our possession this long, they will remain for a while longer while I think of something to do with them.