After using a taper that left my legs feeling energized leading up to the race, I was getting pretty excited for race morning to finally get here. I was able to get a nice night of sleep heading into race morning as well, which is always a plus! I woke up, got on my running stuff, and headed to where the race would start. I also ended up seeing some friends and was able to catch up with them a bit – another plus of signing up for races!

Then the countdown to our start was on and off we went (the mid-40’s temps were incredible as I’ve been prone to overheating throughout the years so this was a relief). I was running exactly how I wanted to in the beginning – totally relaxed and in control, not trying to over-extend anything. I kept this up through the halfway point and was sitting nicely in 4th place (really glad I didn’t try to go with the first three people, they were FLYING!!). It was an interesting race as I essentially ran by myself for the last 12 miles of the race (couldn’t even see the first three people after about the 5k mark, and tried to not check behind me too often).

After about the halfway point the course started getting hilly…after the second one I was starting to worry about keeping up my pace as it was getting more difficult to speed back up after each hill. I knew from my prior two half marathon attempts that miles 8-12 are where the race really comes down to. I put in a lot of training for this race, and some solo PR attempts at shorter distances over the summer (I’ll write about these experiences in October) helped to prep me for running hard by myself, but I also wanted to be done with road/track training for a while as I’ve been missing trails and didn’t want to sign up for another road half after missing my time goal…so I really pushed the effort for miles 8-12. With a mile left I knew I could break the time barrier I set out to if I kept pushing and didn’t fall down or start puking 🙂

Overall it was a great race and I had a good amount of fun for most of it! I kept a smile on my face, interacted with the amazing cheering groups/sections out on the course, and ended up finally breaking the 1:20 mark with a finishing time of 1:19:31 – good for 4th place!

Congrats to all who participated in the 5k/10k/half marathon races and thanks to all of the volunteers who make a weekend like this possible! Detroit Lakes is a wonderful city and running around the lake was a blast – I definitely recommend putting this race on your calendar!

I’m not quite sure what my next race will be, but I do know I’ll be switching over to trail running through the woods for the foreseeable future as the trails are calling my name — see you out there!