Nashville 1/2 Marathon

This morning I ran my first 1/2 Marathon. It was the Nashville Half Marathon sponsored by Hard Rock Cafe and "I Run for the Party". (There was a block party at the end sponsored by Michelob Light....because everyone feels like downing a beer after running 13.1 miles, I guess. Ha! And no, I didn't have one.) I was really nervous because I did it all by myself. But once I got there and the race got started, I was fine. For the first 8 miles or so, my pace was in the 8:50s. I even passed the 2 hour pace girl (she holds up a sign and runs at a pace to finish in that time). Then our route went out to Shelby Bottoms and mile 9 was coming up out of the park. That hill about killed me. It was awful! So, I had to stop and walk some. Then I was fine until mile 12. The last mile was really hard because I was running into a very gusty wind and I had an EXTREMELY full bladder! (but I didn't want to stop!) Lane and Josie were waiting for me at the finish line. I didn't realize it until the finish line, but a friend from church, Melanie Neal, was right behind me. Her finish time was 2:12. My official time from the results website was 2:10:46 with a pace of 9:59. (Still faster than a 10 min. mile!) However, I honestly don't think the course was mapped correctly. I've been running with my Nike GPS for a while on my IPhone. I've never officially calibrated it, but it's always matched what I clocked with the car and what I mapped out on mapmyrun.com. It says I ran 13.5 miles at a pace of 9:44. I just think that's a big difference. My phone would tell me I'd completed a certain mile long before I could see the mile marker flags. Hmmmmm..... Regardless, I FINISHED and at a somewhat decent time! Based on the results, I was ranked 45th out of 182 in my age bracket (30-34 females).
Will I ever run one again??? We'll see....not any time soon! haha