What I Learned From Every Half Marathon I Ran

Life is really just a learning process, right? If you don’t learn as you go along, you don’t make progress and grow as a person. Looking back at the half marathons I’ve run, I realized I learned something at each and every race. Sometimes the things I learned were life-changing and with others it was just minor things I probably knew already but they were re-emphasized to me.

Let’s take a look back at the half marathons I’ve run over the years, going back to the very first half marathon I ever ran, way back in 2000, up to the present day. For most of these, I’ll keep it brief but for the truly life-changing races, I may dig a bit deeper. Hopefully this will be fun, so let’s see!

My very first half marathon, the Battleship Half Marathon in Wilmington, North Carolina in November 2000 was quite a learning experience for me. The weather was crazy, with freezing rain and even snow, which is almost unheard of in this southern coastal city. By the time I finished, my arms and shoulders were so tired I could barely lift them to take my sports bra and running shirt off. I learned several things after this race but the top ones were: 1) I needed to start lifting weights, concentrating on upper body exercises, 2) I learned what a huge factor the weather can be and I knew I could run this race faster under more ideal weather conditions, and 3) I learned I was hooked on running half marathons and wanted to do more.

When I ran the 2001 Battleship Half Marathon, sure enough, I cut several minutes off my finish time and the weather was a beautiful day for a race! I learned the importance of being prepared for a half marathon with strength training and a training plan. The Gold Rush Half Marathon in Concord, North Carolina taught me that heat, hills, and humidity is a nasty combination when it comes to races and to avoid the possibility of the 3H’s at all costs when signing up for a race!

Philadelphia Distance Run (can you find me?)

The Kona Half Marathon in Hawaii (at least when I ran it) was on the same course as the Ironman running portion. It was hot and hilly (but not humid) and beautiful. I loved every second of it and I learned having great views along a course goes a long way! When I ran the Philadelphia Distance Run, I learned big races can be fun as long as they’re well-organized, which this one was.

Kiawah Island Half Marathon in South Carolina is very flat but also tends to have strong headwinds. I learned races along the beach can be difficult despite being flat because of the winds. When I ran the Valley of the Sun Half Marathon in Phoenix, I learned it’s possible to run a half marathon when pregnant as long as you follow your doctor’s recommendations and advice.

The Columbus Distance Run was a race I never should have run. I had been suffering from Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS) before this race and had pain in my knee after running only a couple of miles at a time but I ran it anyway. I couldn’t run for months after the race and I learned sometimes you should DNS (did not start) a race if you’re injured.

After running the Louisville Half Marathon in Kentucky, I learned to research my races better because like the race in Columbus, Ohio, this race was just OK with nothing exceptional about it. The Naples Daily News Half Marathon in Florida taught me there are plenty of fun races in Florida besides Disney and they don’t have to cost a fortune and you don’t have to get up at 3 in the morning on race day either! Covered Bridges Half Marathon in Woodstock, Vermont taught me how much I love Vermont and left me wanting to see the rest of the New England states.

I was surprised at how stifling hot it was at the half marathon in Connecticut!

When I ran the Marathon of the Americas and Half Marathon in San Antonio, Texas, I learned the importance of working in some vacation days after a race; San Antonio is a fun city to explore. The Laughlin Half Marathon in Nevada showed me you can’t always trust the website descriptions for a race (I didn’t find it scenic at all) and packed dirt with gravel on top is horrible to try to run on. Stratton Faxon Half Marathon in Fairfield, Connecticut showed me that even the New England states can get extremely hot during the summer.

The Evansville Half Marathon in Indiana showed me that sometimes taking that leap of faith to run in small towns you’ve never heard of can be worth it (it was my fastest half marathon to date and I loved every minute of the race). Run the Reagan in Snellville, Georgia taught me it’s not fun at all to run along a freeway and even more miserable when it’s raining and cold. The Bayshore Half Marathon in Traverse City, Michigan showed me popular races are popular for a reason (this one sold out quickly when I signed up) and I loved the scenic course.

Finishing on a track was fun at the half in Traverse City, Michigan!

Kroll’s Diner Half Marathon in Bismarck, North Dakota showed me it can be tough to find a half marathon that fits in with your schedule in some states, with North Dakota being one. When I was looking for a half marathon there, I could only find a few races and to this day there are only a handful. Ole Man River Half Marathon in New Orleans showed me even a fun, quirky city like New Orleans can have plain and ordinary races like this one. The Olathe Half Marathon in Kansas showed me some race directors aren’t thoughtful at all when planning a race course and will take you through industrial areas and past neighborhoods with just ordinary houses (or maybe that was just the best they had to offer for a safe course).

The Madison Mini-Marathon in Wisconsin showed me when you run a half marathon in August, even in a state as far north as Wisconsin, it’s going to be HOT so you’d better be prepared for slower race times. I learned a couple of things when I ran the Mississippi Gulf Coast Half Marathon: 1) just because you’re running in a cool place like a space center doesn’t mean you’ll see actual rockets and 2) it sometimes gets cold in Mississippi in late November (I was not expecting it to be in the 30’s).

I’m going to stop here since I still have several half marathons to go and this post is already pretty lengthy. I’ll continue with the rest of the half marathon lessons in another post.

What about you? What lessons have you learned from half marathons or other races you’ve ran?

Happy running!

Donna

Duolingo 2.0

I first wrote a post about my experience with the language-learning website and app Duolingo in Review of Duolingo, which I published in 2017. Since I hadn’t been to any Spanish-speaking countries in quite some time, and I didn’t feel the need to learn Portuguese other than some important words and phrases before my trip to Portugal, I hadn’t used Duolingo in a few years. However, I had a trip planned to Costa Rica and I wanted to start brushing up on my Spanish again before I went there.

Let me just say, the Duolingo that exists now is much better in my opinion than the version I used a few years ago. But first, let me give a little background info before I go any further. Duolingo launched in November of 2011 and now has 106 courses in 41 languages and has around 42 million users. Duolingo is free (with ads) but there is a premium service called Super Duolingo (previously called Duolingo Plus) which is ad-free, lets you accumulate unlimited hearts, and lets you review your mistakes for $6.99/month.

In my first review of Duolingo, I wrote that because of so many multiple choice options, I felt it was too easy and could give users a false sense of security that they were “fluent” in the language they were learning. Now, I’m not seeing nearly as many multiple choice options, although there are still some. There seems to be more speaking required now and definitely more listening options. Now, you can listen to a short story in the language you’re learning and answer questions afterwards. I don’t remember having that option before so I believe it’s relatively new.

I have the free version and it seems like there are many more ads now than before. I won’t lie, the ads are annoying. I’ve learned to just put my phone down and walk away for a minute and come back when the ad is over, although some of the ads are shorter than others. I’m not sure there was a pay version in 2017 but if not that could explain why they’re playing so many ads now, in a hope to get people to pay to skip the ads. The ads I’m seeing are mostly for gaming apps but there are plenty of others as well.

While we’re on the subject of annoying things, another annoying feature is the reminder about the daily streak. Some people might be drawn to this idea of practicing a language on Duolingo every day without missing a day but it’s just annoying to me. I feel like I’ll use the app when I have time and I don’t need reminders that I’m about to lose my daily streak. I don’t care if I’ll lose my streak, Duolingo. I did eventually learn how to turn these reminders off, so at least that’s an option.

I also don’t like how you can’t “test out” if you’re already relatively fluent at your current level, at least not at the free level. Before, you could take a proficiency test and if you passed, you could skip ahead to the next level quickly. Now, as far as I can tell, that option is only if you have the paid version. Well, supposedly. My daughter did the free trial of the paid option and said she took the test to skip to the next level and it wouldn’t let her do it even though she didn’t miss any of the questions.

Back to some of the basic features. There are many sections broken down into units. For example, unit 1 has intro, phrases, travel, restaurant, family, shopping, present tense 1, school, and people. Then there is a checkpoint before you can move on to unit 2. Unit 2 has some of the same sections as unit 1 including family, travel, and people but some new sections like emotions, preference, and describe, for example.

One area I didn’t discover until I had used the app for a while was under the profile icon. There’s an Achievements area and until I clicked on the achievements I had earned, I didn’t actually get the gems and other achievements I had earned on earlier days. You also have the option to follow other friends who also use the app in the profile section. If you’re competitive, there’s a shield icon that will show you what league you’re currently ranked in, based on points. There’s another icon that looks like a gem where you can buy gems (using real money) to be used in the app or you can bump yourself up to Duolingo Plus.

Overall, I find the Duolingo that exists now to be a useful tool for learning another language. The ads are annoying but I’m just not willing to pay for the app so I guess that falls on me; the option is always there to skip the ads if you’re willing to pay for that. I guess the real question was how well did it prepare me for my trip to Costa Rica? Pretty well! I didn’t have any trouble speaking to anyone (and more importantly getting them to understand me) and I could follow along when they spoke as long as they knew I only knew a little Spanish so they could slow down and use more basic words.

Have you used Duolingo either when it first came out the end of 2011 or more recently? If so, what do you think of the app? Do you use another learning app or tool to learn or refresh a foreign language?

Happy travels!

Donna

My Very First DNS (Did Not Start) for a Race EVER

Even I’m surprised that although I have registered for somewhere around 60 races over the past 22 years I’ve never been unable to physically run a race, until now. However, there were a couple of races that I shouldn’t have run, like the half marathon in Ohio where I had terrible iliotibial band syndrome leading up to the race but I ran it anyway and paid the price afterwards and the half marathon in Oklahoma where I was severely anemic before the race and ran/walked that race for my slowest finish time ever.

When I was looking at local races this fall, none of them appealed to me until I came across the Pups & Pastries 5k. Cute dogs and pastries after a race? I’m in! When I found out the proceeds were going to a dog rescue center, it was icing on the cake. Two weeks before the race, I ran 6.2 miles on the course to get acquainted with what I would be looking forward to on race day. Yes, it was hilly but I was looking forward to the challenge. I had been running on hills the past several months so hills were nothing new to me.

Suddenly a little over a week before the race I started having pains in my right shin. Then one week before the race when I went for a 5 mile run I had a sharp, stabbing pain in my right shin when I was getting out of the car, before I even ran. During the course of the 5 miles I experienced even more of those sharp, stabbing pains in my shin a few times. It felt like someone was stabbing my shin with a knife. Not good.

This wasn’t my first time with shin splints. When I was in college I had shin splints so badly I practically crawled home from a run and was in tears when I finally got back to my apartment. I most likely had a stress fracture but didn’t go to the doctor to confirm it. That bout of shin splints/stress fracture was so painful I didn’t run for years afterwards.

So this time around, I knew what I was in for but I was confused about what might have caused them. My running shoes both had less than 300 miles on them, I had been running hills for quite some time, and I always stretched after running. I also knew that while my shin splints were relatively mild, if I continued to run they would inevitably turn into a stress fracture. Just to ease my mind, I went to get my leg x-rayed and the doctor said unless I had been having shin splints for 3-4 weeks they likely wouldn’t show up on an x-ray. Of course he said not to run for 2-3 weeks and if my leg still hurt in a month to get a bone scan done, which would show any fractures in my shin.

I was tempted to take the entire week off before the race and just do some easy walking and try to run on race day but then I knew that was a terrible idea. A local 5k certainly isn’t a good enough reason to potentially cause my shin splints to get worse. I didn’t want to be so injured so badly with a stress fracture that I would have to take months off from running.

Sure, I was disappointed when I accepted the fact that racing with shin splints was a terrible idea so I would DNS this race but then I decided to make lemonade out of lemons. I saw there was a volunteer option on the race website so I immediately emailed the race director to see if they still needed volunteers. He said yes, for many different positions and he thanked me and told me he was sorry to hear I was injured.

Race morning was overcast and cool but not cold- a perfect day for a race (if you’re running, that is)! After I told the person in charge of volunteers I was a runner and had experience with both running and volunteering at races, I was assigned to help out at the finish line. Even though the race was chip-timed, they wanted someone to write down the finishers numbers from their bibs as they crossed the finish line, as a back-up. This may sound like over-kill and in a perfect world it would be but we all know electronics don’t always work perfectly. A couple of times during the race the main timing person asked me to verify the order and/or numbers of a few racers. Another time a runner came up and said his GPS watch time was different from his chip time (as were some other runners that he knew there) and I gave my paper to the main timing person to clear that up.

This race had several options: there was a 5k or 10 mile option you could run with your dog, a fun run 5k option (no dogs), and a competitive 5k or 10 mile race with no dogs allowed. I believe there were about 40 people running with their dogs and it was adorable to see the wide range of dogs there. There were the expected labs and other active breeds but also a good amount of tiny breeds like chihuahuas plus several mixed breeds. I’m a huge dog-lover so I enjoyed just watching the dogs before the race.

Being at the finish line allowed me front-row access to check out all of the dogs as they crossed the finish. Seeing the sheer joy on many of those dog’s cute faces was priceless. The man who was the first to cross the line with his dog was running with a lab who looked like he/she could have kept running for another 10 miles. The dog’s tail was wagging like crazy when it was rewarded with dog treats just past the finish line. There was also water for the dogs and their owners.

Oh, and the pastries part of the race came in the form of what looked like homemade brownies, all of which were individually-wrapped. When I was leaving, I was given one and it was pretty tasty. I’ll have to keep this race in mind for next year when I will hopefully be healthy and can run it! In case you’re wondering, I do have a dog, a 10-year-old lab-mix but she’s not a runner and even when she was younger wasn’t a runner so I won’t be doing it with her.

Have you run a race with your dog? Would you run a 5k with your dog if there was a race that allowed dogs near you? Would you volunteer at a race like this just to see the cute dogs?

Happy running!

Donna

Insider Information As Told To Me By a Costa Rican

When I was in Costa Rica with my daughter, as I’ve said before in a previous post (Day Trips From San Jose, Costa Rica- Poas Volcano, Waterfalls, Hot Springs, Manuel Antonio National Park, Sloths, and Monkeys!), we basically had our own private tour guide. Since we were the only people that had booked tours with Christian through Sol Tropical Tours from our resort that week, we had him all to ourselves. As a result, we got to know him and his home country quite well. He passed along several tidbits of knowledge I’d like to pass along now.

Costa Rica is a peace-loving nation with no military. After the 1948 Civil War, the National Army of Costa Rica was abolished and the money went instead towards education, healthcare, and infrastructure. According to Christian, Costa Ricans value these three things as fundamental constitutional rights that all people should have. There are five public universities that are funded by the government so students can get excellent educations at an affordable cost.

The healthcare system in Costa Rica is consistently ranked as one of the best in the world. Although there is a free public healthcare system in place, it’s primarily free for the poor people who are residents; expats and people with a job have to pay for health care, but it’s still a fraction of what most Americans pay. If you’re part of the public healthcare system, what hospital you can go to is determined by where you live. For example, Christian said the best hospitals in Costa Rica are in or near San Jose but there are good hospitals throughout the country.

It is one of the most biodiversity rich places in the world. Costa Rica is in the top 20 places in the world for biodiversity and has one of the top 10 most biodiverse-rich rainforest ecosystems. A big chunk of the country is also protected from companies like loggers and developers, with a little over a quarter of its land protected in national parks, wildlife refuges, biological reserves, and private reserves.

Costa Rica is one of the most “green” countries in the world. During his inauguration speech in 2018, Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado announced that he plans to ban all fossil fuels with the ultimate goal of becoming carbon neutral. Costa Rica produces nearly 93 percent of its electricity from renewable resources. Abundant rainfall and rivers allow for hydro power to meet most of the electricity demand, followed by geothermal, wind, solar and biomass.

Tourism is Costa Rica’s main source of income, with almost 2 million tourists a year. The majority of tourists are from the US and Canada, so Costa Ricans are friendly towards Americans for the most part, knowing they are such a vital part of their economy (according to Christian). That being said, Costa Rican officials don’t want tourists to overstay their welcome and you had better have proof that you will be leaving the country within 90 days, as checked by immigrations and border patrol.

Costa Rica is known to turn lemons into lemonade by repurposing some of its military buildings. Several museums are former military barracks, prisons, and other related buildings such as the Juan Santamaria Historical Cultural Museum in Alajuela, the Guanacaste Museum in Liberia, and the National Museum in San Jose. For Costa Ricans, these buildings are proud symbols of national peace. Instead of just tearing the buildings down, they decided to keep them and use them for something positive.

National Museum of Costa Rica

Driving in Costa Rica is complicated. Christian was telling us how a person on one of his tours commented that Costa Ricans like to lay on their horns a lot and Christian said he disagreed. Then he continued to tell us that when drivers blow their horns, it’s almost like a secret language. One quick toot means something specific, while two quick toots mean something else, and there’s an entire sequence of horn blowing and hand gestures that seemingly only locals can understand. When I mentioned that many drivers don’t stop at stop signs, he said, “Only when it’s clear that we don’t need to stop. If it’s night time or no one else is coming, we may not stop.” Pedestrians also seemingly don’t have the right-of-way, as I experienced first-hand when walking around downtown San Jose.

Knowing at least a little Spanish is helpful. Christian told me that he learned English in school, as does everyone else, so Costa Ricans usually know at least some English (although if they aren’t regularly using it they’ll forget it like anyone else). Still, Costa Ricans appreciate if you make an effort to learn some basic Spanish words like por favor (please), gracias (thank you), hola; the “h” is silent (hello), and adios (goodbye). Don’t worry about not getting words exactly right or if your accent isn’t great. They don’t expect you to speak in perfectly fluent Spanish but the effort is appreciated.

Having a guide isn’t necessary but can be extremely helpful, especially if it’s your first time in Costa Rica. Since driving is complicated, there are often mudslides, especially in the rainy season, and it’s such a diverse country with so much to see, having a guide can help you navigate (literally) safely and efficiently. Sure, you can hire a taxi or Uber to drop you off at a national park but you won’t learn about the history and gain the insider information about the area like you would from a tour guide. Although this wasn’t my first time in Costa Rica, I was grateful to have a guide.

Costa Rica has some of the best coffee in the world. I had heard this before and I had seen bags of Costa Rican coffee in grocery stores before but I’m not a coffee drinker so it didn’t mean much to me. My teenage daughter, however, is a huge coffee lover so of course she wanted to try the coffee, and of course she loved it. There’s a unique way of brewing coffee in Costa Rica with something called a chorreador. This is a popular brewing device used for over two hundred years in Costa Rica built of a wooden stand that holds the coffee cup or pot and a piece of cloth held open by a wire or rim. It’s cool-looking and makes you feel like you’re getting something special rather than just a cup of coffee brought to you. Also, I can attest there’s something special about Costa Rican coffee because as I mentioned, I don’t drink coffee, however, one time when I ordered a hot cocoa, I was accidentally handed a coffee. I didn’t realize it was coffee until after we had left the cafe and I was cold so I figured I’d just try it. It was GOOD and most of all, it didn’t make my heart race like coffee normally does. I’m not going to start drinking Costa Rican coffee now but there’s definitely something different about the coffee.

Skip the all-inclusive hotel. There are many AI hotels in Costa Rica and I understand it’s tempting to just have all of your food and drinks already paid for along with your hotel room. The first time I went to Costa Rica, I stayed at an all-inclusive resort and only left the resort to go on a day trip for horseback riding, ziplining, and mud pools and one other time for a bike tour of the area. Every meal was eaten at the resort so I didn’t get to try food from different areas or even go to many different areas for that matter. I didn’t get to experience the grocery stores (which I always love to do on vacation) either. That was why this time I wanted to stay in the central valley and take day trips so I could see more of the country.

I think that’s about everything but I’m sure I’m forgetting some important points about Costa Rica that Christian passed along or that I ended up learning on my own (like the all-inclusive hotels). What about you- have you been to Costa Rica? If so, where did you go and what did you do? What things did you learn about the country while you were there?

Happy travels,

Donna