Saturday I ran the Jackson River Trail Half Marathon. I’ve had a half marathon on my bucket list for a while and since I had a free weekend – this was the only one going on in the state – so I went. The Jackson River Trail is a rails to trail path in Covington VA almost to West Virginia. Even this time of the summer it was cool mid-60s to start and the trail is almost entirely shaded so we never got that much sun or heat.

I started out great and got with a group to pace myself around 8:40 and not run too fast.  That worked for a about 6 or 7 miles when I learned it was in fact too fast and I started to fall apart from there.  I made it through, I learned a lot, and now I have a benchmark to try and beat and improve my time.