13.1

Mission accomplished! I completed the half marathon!

My main goal was to finish. Check. I had several time goals: ambitious, realistic, and easily achievable. The ambitious goal went out the window pretty quickly because the heat was rough. The race started at a Yellow event alert level, but that was bumped up to Red less than an hour in to the race. I definitely could have met or beat the realistic goal, but I was running with two women from my training group and one of them was really struggling in the heat. Between mile 4 and mile 5 she needed to slow down, so we changed our game plan to stick with her through the race. We shifted to 3:3 intervals, but even that was a challenge after a while, so we did a lot of walking and ran when she felt like she could. We stopped at every first aid station for ice and had a few other stops as well. But we completed the race, and we did it together.

Here are the splits. That was probably a slightly faster start than it should have been, but in the moment I felt good that I was not going out too fast. In fact, the beginning of the race felt so good, I came up with an on-the-spot mantra for the race: "I could do this all day." I really felt like I could and kept telling myself that throughout the race.

mi	Pace (min/mi)
1	13:03
2	12:48
3	13:34
4	14:23
5	15:22
6	15:40
7	15:49
8	15:41
9	18:10
10	17:51
11	16:53
12	17:17
13	18:03
14	10:05

One of the coaches from our training group gave us our medals, and I admit that I got a bit choked up in that moment.

I'm not sure if I'll do another one. It's not highly likely, but never say never. Plus, I have to admit that I would love to do one in cooler temps to see what I could do time-wise.

I'm feeling surprisingly good post-race. I think some of that came from not pushing as hard as I could, but also from good training and lots of hydrating.

Here's a picture of me with my medal after the race!

One Week

As I am typing this, I am exactly one week away from the start of the half marathon. I alternate between being really excited about this to really scared. "What was I thinking?" is a constant refrain in my head. I try to replace it with positive thoughts, but that is challenging.

I've done the training, I have a plan, and I can do this. I want to be able to embrace and soak up the experience. Fingers crossed for that and for cool(ish) weather!

Becoming One of "Those" Runners

Training for the half marathon has done a lot of good things for my running, but possibly the most amusing (and, admittedly, proud) developments is that I am now, somewhat regularly doing things that I thought only hard core runners did.

Most notably, about a month ago I ran a 10K. However, the training plan schedule had us running eight miles that day. So after a hard, hot 10K (which will get its own post at some point) I regrouped while attending the awards ceremony, got some fluids, and then headed back out to do two more miles.

Similarly, a few weeks ago, I had an hour long run on tap for the evening. It was raining lightly when I left the house, but the radar looked promising. Wrong. The rain increased to a steady, albeit not heavy, drizzle. I logged my time, doing the whole run in the rain, which is something I'd never done before.

Run for the Zoo 2012

My training is paying off in spades. I got a PR in the Run for the Zoo 5K and, unless the course markings were way off, managed a monster negative split on the last mile.

36:40 (mile splits: 12:11, 12:49, 10:37!)

That's 1:13 faster than my previous 5K PR (the 2010 Ravenswood Run, which was my first 5K), and it was 2:39 faster than my time at Ravenswood this year, a little more than a month ago.

Here's a picture of Alex and me after the race.