Well, I ran half marathon #22 last Saturday! I went out of town, specifically because the Go Girl Run Half Marathon in Springfield, MO looked like it would be a GOOD one for me. And I SUCCEEDED!! I honestly have to THANK my coach, because she has helped me fine tune my training more than I ever could have… I had a magical day with PERFECT weather and this was a SMALL race with only 170 participants in the half marathon, so there was no congestion. I tried carb loading for the first time ever and it felt great!!!! Not only did I come away with a sub 2 hour goal (I have never seen my husband so animated and excited when he saw me right before the finish line), but I also got my first ever age group award!!! I’m still in shock over it. I shaved 4~ minutes off my last half marathon time and 2 minutes off my goal time for myself for this race!! Honestly, it all fell into place in such a perfect way and I am SO thankful to have met a goal that I’ve been trying to reach since my thirties!! And I finally met it at the age of 47! Age is truly JUST a number!
This race was in the town of Springfield, MO, which is exactly 3 hours away from St. Louis. We drove down on Friday and came back after the race (and a much needed shower) on Saturday. Go Girl Run hosts 4 races a year in Springfield, Kansas City, Columbia and Oklahoma City on different dates. This race is for GIRLS only, but they will let men run in it, but their times are posted separately. I did see a few men in it. There was a 5K as well, but they started 5 minutes after the half marathon and were on a completely different course than us.
The race included a smoothie at the end, which was so fun! The temperature was 42 degrees at the starts and 52 degrees by the end. I get hot quickly, so I wore a light jacket till we had to gather in the corral. I did keep my mittens on for the first mile or so.
Everyone got a hair ribbon to wear in their hair.
I finished at 1:59:15 with a negative split! The course had some rolling hills most miles, but 6 of the miles were downhill. I did most of my long runs at parks with hills that had steeper inclines than this course and it REALLY helped me. There was really just one hill near the end of the race that fatigued me a bit, but really I was running over the hills with a lot of confidence during the race. I never felt like I hit a wall, which I think was because of the carb loading I did this time around… and my coach had me prepared with a strong foundation of training. I really had no clue how to train properly until I hired her to help me! I had set a goal of finishing at 2:02 for this race (I had ran 2:04 in the fall) and I felt so strong that I just decided to chuck my plan out the window and GO for it!! I am glad it worked and I stayed strong till the end. There was a girl in a yellow tutu that passed me at mile 11. She was going at a painfully fast pace and I stayed behind her and dug deep to finish strong, because I knew I only had 2 miles left and they were DOWNHILL ones!! She really helped me!
Here are my race stats for the 2025 Go Girl Run Half Marathon in Springfield.
Time: 1:59:15
Pace: 9:06
Here is a close up of my medals. It was SO fun to win an age group medal. When I run in St. Louis, there is THOUSANDS of people running, so you almost have to be an ELITE athlete to ever win in any category. I placed 3rd in my age group and 31st out of 170 runners. The medals are so pretty and HUGE!
On our way into Springfield, there was a Buc’ees! We LOVE Buc’ees! We picked up some snacks/souvenirs for the kids.
Springfield, MO was bigger than I thought it’d be! It was a really nice town, everyone was so friendly. They even said a PRAYER before the half marathon, which would never happen in St. Louis!! We were able to walk to everything from our hotel. Dinner was a 3 minute walk and walking to the race site was only 4 minutes.
I booked us an overnight room at Hotel Vandivort and we stayed in their V2 Balcony Suite. The room was really nice and we had these huge screens on the windows that we could move up or down with a button (there was a black out option too!). Our room had a walk out deck and a view of downtown Springfield.
There was a rooftop bar/restaurant on the top floor of our hotel. I wasn’t drinking any alcohol before my race, but we went upstairs to get a photo of the sunset.
I always eat spaghetti for my night before my race meal. I found a really cute restaurant named Bruno’s by our hotel.
It is SO hard to be out of town in a restaurant that has such a fantastic menu and to eat just Spaghetti Pomodoro, but OHH the delicious homemade sauce made up for it! I landed up getting a MOCKtail (aerial spritzer) with my meal. I was carb loading, so give me all the sugar! After dinner, I went to bed early to get some Zzzz’s before the race. All in all the weekend was a SUCCESS and now that I’ve hit my half marathon time goal, I am making some NEW future running goals… I’m considering doing my second MARATHON possibly in Fall 2026!!! I really want to do ONE more marathon before I turn 50! I plan to run 1-2 more half marathons before I attempt my second marathon.
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