Scranton Half Marathon 2015 Recap

On Sunday, I completed the 2nd annual Scranton Half Marathon. After my fairly painful experience at the Hot Chocolate 15k the weekend before, I was slightly nervous about the half. I actually debated dropping out for a brief moment, but we ran the inaugural race last year and it's really important to both Joe and me that we become legacy runners for this awesome local race. Besides, I'm not the type of person to just drop out and not even try. :P

The expo was nice and not overly crowded when we picked our packets up on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, they were sold out of this year's hoodies, but I scored a water bottle and stemless wine glass from last year's race on clearance! I learned my lesson and will be preordering a sweatshirt next year for sure because I'm really bummed that I don't have this year's. A girl can never have too many sweatshirts.

Puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

Race morning started by dragging myself out of bed at 6am, getting dressed, eating some oatmeal, and heading out the door just after 7am. We got to the race by 7:30 and were able to park nice and close in the high school parking lot. We lined up around 8:45 and the race started promptly at 9am. I didn't really have a plan; I did want to use intervals, but the timer app that I downloaded wouldn't work if my phone screen was off so I ditched that right away. I ended up basically running the downhills and walking the uphills, with additional walk breaks whenever I felt I was pushing too hard.

The course was the same as last year and I felt like I enjoyed it more this year because I got an extra hour to take it all in! The weather was also fantastic just like last year. It was 37 and sunny when we started and 55 and sunny when I finished three hours later. Somewhere around mile two or three, I wound up around two women running for Team in Training. They were doing intervals that matched up pretty well to what I was doing, so I creepily followed behind them for a while and I'm so glad I did. Those two women were so uplifting to listen to. They thanked every volunteer, built each other up, and cheered on other runners and walkers. Their positivity really resonated with me and helped change my mood from "ugh this sucks being injured and being in the back" to "I'm so thankful that I can still be out here doing this even if I'm not 100%".

Lackawanna Heritage Trail portion of the race

I ended up following those ladies (not the ones in the photo, I passed them :P) until mile eight when my good knee turned into my bad knee and I had to switch my knee brace over and walk for a while. I decided that I would walk to mile 10 and in the meantime, I took some ibuprofen and a salted caramel Gu. They both kicked in right around the same time and at mile 10, I was ready to go! I knew it wasn't smart, but I ran a lot of the last three miles. I just felt so good and I knew it was because of the pain killers, but I wasn't feeling the snapping in the back of my knee like I usually do and that's not something pain killers can dull, so I figured I was okay to run. I finished with an official time 2:57:36, which is officially my slowest half marathon, but you know what? I'm not mad. I wasn't disappointed when I finished and I haven't felt upset at all in the days following. I'm just happy that I was able to get out there and participate in this great event and enjoy a beautiful day.

The medals feature an electric trolley, part of Scranton's history as the "Electric City." It's fantastically heavy and although I like last year's design better, I'm thrilled with this one too. They also gave out awesome fleece blankets at the finish like last year! The list of reasons why I love this race is far too long. Hopefully I'll be healthy and fast(ish) again for next year!