Saturday dawned cloudy and rainy.  But the excitement was felt by all of the participants.  The goal this year for the Marathon committee was to get 20,000 runners, counting everyone who was entered into any of the races (5k-10k-1/2-Full Marathon).  I haven't heard yet if they reached thier goal or not, but they had to be close!  The Fargodome was packed!

We got rained on for the first hour or so, but it cleared off after that.  I tried staying with a pace group this year for the first time.  Though I was unable to stick with them, I will train for that next time, I believe that would have been fun!

The beginning of the race (not considering the rain) was great!  I felt great, my pace was even, felt like I could have ran forever!  Then, at about Mile 6, I started to get tired.  I made the mistake of drinking Gatorade right after having a Goo packet.  I think I over-did the carbs.  That's never happened to me before, but it is something I'm going to remember for next time.  After that, I couldn't seem to drink enough water, but I felt sloshey.  Wierd... anyways.  Things went downhill after that.

Lessons learned!

Next 1/2 Marathon = Bismark in September!!!