I did it! I completed the Flying Pig Half Marathon 2025! This was my second Flying Pig and my 6th half marathon (I’ve done one full marathon, but it was a miserable experience for me, so we don’t talk about that haha).
I wrote a whole blog post, and complained a lot to my family and friends about how much I hated the training cycle for this particular half marathon. Honestly, I think it was mostly the weather. It was either miserably cold or wet and rainy for almost all of January, February, March AND April. Getting long runs in outside was so hard, and getting even the shorter training runs in on the treadmill sucked all the joy out of running for me! I probably completed about half the training runs I should’ve actually done, and my strength training was nonexistent. I cried over it more times than I care to admit, and I even went on to the website to see if I could cancel my registration. I couldn’t cancel it, and so I decided I would just run/walk and try to have fun and complete it.
And I did!! And it was so much better than I had anticipated!! I didn’t get a PR, or even hit my original time goal. I ran it about 10 minutes slower than the same race last year. But I felt GOOD the whole time, and I didn’t have to stop to walk at all. I conquered the hills and my family was there to cheer me on, and I just had a blast all around.
The Flying Pig is the best and the most fun race I have ever run. The spectators are next level. The runners are insane, hilarious, inspirational and everything in between. There are 60,000 runners- from the elite runners to people dressed in pig costumes. I saw a blind runner, a runner with a prosthetic leg, runners who were FLYING, and runners who were walking. The feeling from the start line all the way to the finish line is absolutely ELECTRIC. It doesn’t matter that it was cold and rainy- the people SHOWED up. Man, I loved it.
It was also so much easier since it was my second time doing this particular race. Last year, the most stressful part was driving and trying to find parking in the city, so this year I opted to carpool with friends. Being able to ride with someone and walk to the start line with them helped take away almost all my nerves. I’m so thankful for Abby and Krista! I also felt much more prepared for the course. I remembered crossing over bridges and when I was about to hit a big hill (the course includes an uphill that lasts for almost 3 miles). There was even a couple of times in this race that I got to the top of a hill and thought “Huh, I remember it being so much tougher last year!”.
The only part that was super stressful was after crossing the finish line. For some reason there was a huge bottleneck of runners and we were inside the finish line gates, just stuck. It was raining pretty intensely, and none of our cell phones were working because there were so many people packed together, everyone was starting to get cold and shivery, and it was just not a great place to be. The bottleneck was for all the finished racers trying to get to the “afterparty” area, but since I was not even remotely interested in that, I eventually followed some rogue people and hopped a fence barrier to get myself out of there and find my family.
I’m so glad that I ran it- and I’m proud of how my body felt before, during and after the race! I am also so glad it’s over!
On Tuesday I snagged a picture with my classroom teachers aide, because she also ran the half! There were so many runners that we didn’t even see each other during the race, and I was so keen to get myself out of that finish line area that we didn’t catch up after the race, either. So here we are in our teacher professional clothes showing off our medals together! This was her first half and I’m SO insanely proud of her for doing it!!
And that’s a wrap on the Flying Pig 2025! Who wants to take guesses…will I sign up for the 2026 round?!?