A weekend full of running greatness:

Saturday, I went back to work the 47th Jesuit Sheaner Relays. With a brand new stadium, the new track was much needed and provided for a great venue. Some incredible performances while I was working curve judge; a kid from Mansfield Timberview ran the 2nd leg of their mile relay team, got the baton in last, ran (hand time claimed) :45.6 and put their team in 1st, quite impressive. Reliving the great memories of running hurdles at Jesuit for 4 years is always great.

But Sunday was the main event. My dad is the reason I started distance running to begin with after I had watched him run a few marathons, so for the Rock' n Roll Dallas 1/2 Marathon, I decided we were going to run the race together. We had agreed on shootin' for 1:45, running negative splits, and staying under 8:00/mile. Through 8 miles, we had hit all our times exactly and began to pick things up to start working on that negative split. The one complaint I do have about the race was when in Highland Park, the city wouldn't allow bands to play, and that's after all one of the highlights of the Rock 'n Roll series is to have bands playing at every mile. But anyway, the pace was getting ratcheted down quicker than I expected, as I was letting my dad dictate the pace... 7:40... 7:36... 7:25... at which point he decided over the course of mile 12 that mile 13 was going to be our fastest mile of the day. My watch went off when we hit the mile 12 sign, indicated we had run 7:15, I passed that message on to my dad, and the race was on... I stayed even with him but I wasn't pushing it, letting him dictate, but if I let off the gas even a little, he would start to pull ahead. At 50+ years old, my dad threw down a 6:40 final mile, finished in 1:39:30. We crossed the line together, hands held high (at the exact time might I add, even though they of course had me at 1:39:31). I had great expectations for this experience, but they were all far surpassed and once again gave me yet another reason to love running. The cherry on top was my mom, also running, ran a PR by over 8 minutes finished 2:09:27, I believe... all the while we had our own fan section of my brother & his girlfriend, my aunt, & my best friend. All in all, incredible day!

Eight weeks of training completed on my path to Big Sur on May 1st, it's pretty standard that you test your level of fitness with a 1/2 marathon. Sunday was slated to be that day. My parents drove down so my dad & I could run the Armadillo Dash 1/2 Marathon together. In regular terms, the weather was a little cold, but in running terms, it was perfect. Mid 40's at 7 a.m. when we stepped to the line ready to compete for 13.1 miles.
I did my usual, go out way too hard the first 1/2 mile, looked down at my watch to realize I was hitting 6:20/mile pace and tried to settle into my rhythm. My strategy was get to 10 miles, assess where I was at, and finish the race accordingly. When I get to about mile 8, the section of the course that had a few good hills, I was feeling really good, powered up the hills with ease, and just felt good so I decided to give it a go. I kept trying to settle in with people that seemed to be going about my pace, but every time I did that, they seemed to fall off, or I just was ready to push the pace a little more.
Going into the race, I had three goals: finish in under an hour and a half, finish top 10 overall, & finish top 3 in my age group. I was an incredibly happy person; I finished in 1:26:17, 9th overall, 2nd in my age group.