13.1 miles of fun!

So, if someone had suggested to me a couple of years ago that I might get up at 4:30, get some stuff together, drive an hour and a half, run for two plus hours, eat an apple, and then head home... I would have politely declined and considered that person an eccentric who did not have my best interests at heart. Then I started running... and now the 4th of July is just one more opportunity to run until my toenails turn black!
I did my second half-marathon today, and it was mostly fun, and I have the following observations:

1. Sometimes you start in Nebraska, drive through parts of Iowa and parts of Missouri, and end up back in Nebraska, and you didn't even get lost!
2. Rural running is fun.
3. The corn is looking good.
4. I need to revise my iPod playlist. Less random slow stuff, more ABBA.
5. My feet hurt.
6. The beauty of small races: I was among the top ten female finishers!
7. The downside of small races: there were fewer than ten female half-marathon runners, and while I was not quite dead last, this was mostly because other people just ended up being more tired than I was.
8. PR (personal record): 2:17. I'm a lot slower, in this particular context, than Sarah Palin.
9. It really *is* the humidity. I've never been sweatier, ever.
10. I'm going to do that again soon. Really, it's so much fun. The fun starts around mile 5 and dissipates around mile 10, when you've still got a whole 5K to run, but those five miles make the rest of it worth it.
11. Blisters.
12. Holy muddy trail! Turns out mud will actually clump on the bottom of your shoes and you have to break stride to scrape it off in a kind of wierd dance that's inexplicable as the people in front of you do it after the first muddy stretch and then totally obvious once your own shoes are mud-laden.
13. I heckled a fisherman around mile 5, and it kept me giggling until mile 6.

No pictures, since my posse wisely stayed home to participate in the neighborhood bike parade, but since I look much less glamourous than other women runners, who seem not to get as sweaty and disheveled and mud-caked and red-faced, that might be for the best. You know you look less than your best when multiple people say things like, "Are you ... ok?" and you say, somewhat surprised, "I'm fine! Just fine!" Although to counterbalance that, I've gotten complimented twice recently on my "stride" and not by men (I assume that'd be the runner equivalent of "Want to come up and see my etchings?") leading me to conclude that I apparently have decent form. Which I'll take.

Finally, since I've been nattering to various people for a while about the dude who collected his own fallen toenails, and the toenails of others, and cataloged them and then strung them on a necklace for his wife... and I don't think I've posted a picture of this... enjoy: