Reykjavik Half-Marathon

Good news, I survived the Reykjavik Half-Marathon and I had an amazing time in Iceland :)

I landed Friday morning and luckily I was able to check in to my hotel early and take a nap since I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.  My first stop was the race expo to pick up my kit, and then I wandered around the city for the rest of the day, but I did go to bed early so I wouldn't be exhausted for the race. I didn't have high hopes going into the race Saturday morning considering I wasn't feeling 100% but I decided that I would run as much as a I could and walk the rest if need be.

Things started out much better than I expected and I was feeling great until mile 4 when my camera and IPod fell out of my waist pouch. I had a little panicky moment when all I could think was "I can't run 9 miles without music!!" but thankfully my IPod and camera were both okay.  Once I recovered from that things went smoothly for the next 5 miles or so when I started to feel my energy waning so I took a few Honey Stingers and a walking break.  After that I felt okay until about mile 11.5 when I started walking again and I walked until a little past mile 12 where I was able to pick up the pace again, knowing I only had a mile to go.

I somehow forgot to turn on the GPS on my watch, so it was running on my shoe pod and I thought I had finished in 2:30, which was my time for NYC, but apparently I finished in 2:28 so I guess that's a PR! Had I known I was going to come in in under 2:30 I probably wouldn't have walked as much, but on the bright side it means that I was running faster when I was actually running :P  All in all I'm happy with my time and I really enjoyed the race.

The course was nice, especially the parts along the water and the crowd support in the residential areas was awesome. At one point there was a whole band just playing in the driveway and there were quite a few people out with their own instruments to entertain the runners :)

I have quite a few pictures of Iceland I'd love to share with you guys so I'll post those and tell you more about my trip in my next post  :)