Half marathon - Check

At the beginning of this year, I was really having a hard time getting back in to running after having the baby. Because of our move and Jared's schedule, I've been running on a treadmill - by myself (aka BORING). Mentally, running on a treadmill is so much more difficult than running outside. You have way too many things all around you reminding you how far you have gone or how far you have not yet gone. I cover up the treadmill but the clock on the wall catches my eye. I pick the treadmill the furthest from the clock on the wall and the TV in front of me goes to commercial, reminding me how much time has lapsed. And then to run without a friend to talk to - that makes it almost unbearable.

My solution... I decided to pick a half marathon and train for it. At first, I was committed to my training, but my busy life soon took priority and my training became more of an afterthought. I never missed a long run, but with a San Marcos shopping trip, spring break, etc... my mid-week runs became more sparse the closer my race came. Yesterday was the big day and I knew I wasn't prepared for the distance, much less the grueling hills I was about to face. I was so not looking forward to it that I didn't even bring my camera and I told my fan club (sister Sara and Jared) to stay back and take care of the kids, or in Sara's case... sleep in. The race organizers made it difficult for spectators to be there anyway - so it just didn't seem worth it.

In the end, it was a good experience and I'm glad I did it because it absolutely got my running mileage back up. Because I was not conditioned enough, I really went into the race with zero expectations and ran about what I expected or even a little better. Here is my quick low-down...

The first six miles were hill intensive and my unconditioned legs quickly turned into jell-o. But, the weather was great and I had a lot of energy. We were on beautiful country roads with almost no cars and no spectators (which I liked). And up until about mile six, I was feeling pretty confident in myself. At this point, my pace was 10:55. By mile 8.5, I had only slowed to an 11:08 minute pace and was still feeling pretty good. However, I stopped to use the potty at this point and my "pace" dropped to 11:30 because of that pit stop. No worries, I was a little grateful that my standard had been lowered a bit and I could take it easy into the finish line. After just about one more mile, my IT Band or my hip joint (couldn't tell which) really started to hurt. I typically don't try to run through pain (sore or tired muscles, yes... pain, no because of the chance of prolonged injury) but the peer pressure of all those runners around me worked and I tried my best to plug through the last few miles, which we ran on a golf course. I stopped every half mile or so and stretched my IT Band and walked for a minute or so. And, I came into the finish line at exactly 2 hours and 36 minutes. Interestingly, this is exactly half of the time it took me to run my marathon a couple of years ago, on a similar hilly course.

At this point, I'm looking forward to decreasing my mileage and taking on some high intensity interval running, along with weights to increase my strength and then possibly running another half in the fall on a FLAT course. I do really enjoy the half marathon. I think it is my favorite distance to run in a race. It's not too short so that I feel like I have to be fast, but not so long that I am constantly babying injuries and having to commit to months of grueling training.