A few weekends ago I ran the Hyannis Half Marathon for the first time! It was also my first race in bad weather (at least since track)! One of my goals for the year is to run at least 1 race a month so when an old track bud mentioned this race I signed right up! I’m really lax on preparation so I didn’t even know the weather was supposed to be bad until she mentioned it but I was kind of excited since I tend to like running in the rain and weather (it makes me feel BA 😂).

Race morning did not disappoint. It was down-pouring! At home (like an hour away) it wasn’t too cold, but I also knew the race was right by the water.. but I also hate clothes.. so I ended up wearing a kind of mismatch of warm and cold gear.

Again, not the best at preparation, so I ended up making it there pretty close to the race. Luckily, they didn’t shut down any roads I needed to get to the lot, the lot still had plenty of room, and it was super close to packet pickup. Also packet pickup was really speedy! My friend even found me by accident! The expo is hosted in the hallway leading up to and in a hotel event room so everyone was able to hangout inside and keep warm up until the race start.

It was a noticeably short wait at the start (they must have done the anthem during the marathon/early half start) and then we were off! I don’t really remember much for the first 6 miles. There was some nice beach front stretches and I was feeling GOOD. It felt pretty flat (just a few gentle ups and downs here and there) and we got a whole lane to ourselves I believe the entire time!

At around mile 7.5 it started having some noticeable incline. I’m a fan of some hills though so it wasn’t terrible. But then somewhere between mile 9 and 10 my legs started going numb from the cold. Afraid over what my form was looking like since I couldn’t feel it, I slowed down a lot. The rest of the course seemed to be the world’s most gradual, but steady incline and what little of my legs I could feel felt like they weighed 200 lbs so I just kept slowing down. It was the most painful 5k (that I didn’t stop to walk) of my life.

I made it to the finish line and received my medal and water. I have this weird thing where I HATE bananas all other times, but after a race all I want in life is a banana so when I wasn’t handed my usual finish line banana I was pretty discouraged. (Like that post-race unreasonably emotional about things level sad.) I mulled sadly around the finish line for awhile until my race-brain faded and I realized I am just completely useless at thinking after a race. THE EXPO WAS INSIDE! I went in to find my friend had already beaten me there, a live band, donuts, soup, and fruits including all the bananas a girl could want!

Overall it was a fun race that I would run again and recommend! I’d just warn to be prepared for the weather (as multiple people said it was like that most years) but that may have just been me being me and normal people would know to wear clothes 😂 (I’d also recommend Turtle Gloves as my hands were the only thing that didn’t feel the weather at all!) They took A TON of awesome photos (which is a super win in my book) but they weren’t free (bummer). They had instant printable finish results, which was neat! Also the indoor expo, so you could actually hangout comfortably, was really nice! The last thing I took mental note of was they had vegetable soup for vegans (the other choice was chicken noodle), but they added barley so it was no longer gluten free which was a bummer 🤷‍♀️