Dashing (Amster)Dames: 3rd Half Marathon complete...

So I believe I've mentioned before on this blog, if I have no upcoming goal (read: race) I have very little motivation to run. For the first 1/2 marathon I was terrified I wouldn't be able to run the full 13.1 miles, so I followed a strict schedule of running and other workouts 5x per week. The second one I slacked due to travel and didn't do much of the non-running workouts, but I did manage a number of longer runs around 10-12 miles which got me through.

Several months ago, Annie and I took a look at races in other countries and selected a night run in Estonia. With the 'white nights' they experience we thought it would be a cool experience and a good motivator to keep running after our Hague 1/2 marathon. White nights, dear readers, are a phenomenon experienced at the top of the Earth where the sun hardly sets and the night is turns a greyish-whitish color instead of blueish-blackish.

Unfortunately, this run again was slackerville, but unlike the last race, for this one I fit in fewer long runs, so while the first 11 miles of the race were ok but slow, the last two were painful and I actually walked a little bit - something I didn't do on either of the first two. My right knee ached a bunch and I couldn't remember if that was usual far distance pain, or I'd actually hurt my knee, but the number of injured people in my life right now made me slow to a walk for a few seconds a few times at the end.

When I finished it was quite dark out - what happened to the 'white nights'?!? My wonderful support team was there waiting for me even though it was dark, chilly and buggy when I finally crossed the finish line. I'd also like to note that Estonians are fast runners! While I am slow, I spent a lot of this race (after the 10km racers finished) running with very few people. There were also tons of spectators at the start of the race and a lot less than that, which surprised me given the race looped around the city a bunch of times and was at night, which I thought would make it appealing for people to BBQ and party while watching. I was wrong.

Spectators, you are very important to runners. You are especially important to me. While training I run slow, but while racing, I feed off the crowd's enthusiasm and run much faster. I smile at people, I high five children, I pump my fist for the bands, DJs, dance teams, etc that line the sidelines and perform. I'm a fun runner to watch and cheer for, IMHO. Anyway, if you take anything from this post (or my blog) it should be these two things #1 - you too can run a 1/2 marathon and #2 - cheer for the runners and strangers that run in your life or in races in your area... it does make a huge difference to them.

Unfortunately, without the crowd, I was slooooooooow. The race was long and Rakvere is a nice town, but not exceptionally pretty and the course wasn't very interesting, so I was a bit bored with the run. My podcasts (I mentioned I don't listen to music while I run, right?) weren't particularly interesting, so I couldn't zone out listening to a cool story or anything. Anyway, enough complaining. I finished, which is always my goal.

We spent Friday before the race checking out Rakvere and then Saturday/Sunday in Tallinn. It was a lovely little city and it was really nice for walking, eating, pictures and general visiting. Two thumbs up to Estonia.

Here are some fun photos :)