Yowza, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here! I did a triathlon and trained for a half marathon since my last post. I need to get back on it because this is a big race year, and I want to track my progress and all that.
First up, the Rock and Roll Half Marathon from this past weekend. This was my third time doing the race, second time running it. I don't even really count the walking one anymore, now that I'm fit. That's probably kind of a bitchy thing to say. Anyway, I have never been so unprepared for a race as I was for this one. My long training runs through Christmas Eve (nine miles) were all decent. Some sucked, some were awesome, but I've found that tends to be the nature of the running beast, at least for me. Then I got a cold around Christmas and didn't do much of anything in an attempt to get better and not make it worse. That ended up making running a lot worse because all of a sudden it was time for a 10 mile training run, and I'd only done one short two mile run in two weeks' time. Oops. I didn't even make it the whole 10 miles. It was an awful run. Then a few days before the race I got another cold. I was popping echinacea, zinc, and vitamin C like they were candy. I was really not excited for the race at all.
Race day arrives, and I'm feeling pretty good. I made a new playlist and did the songs in a certain order instead of my usual shuffle. I started out pretty strong and was feeling good. I was running by myself because the husband wanted to finish in two hours or less, and only one of my friends was running it, but she was in a different corral/pace than me. I got to about mile two and knew I wasn't going to make it much further without a bathroom stop. Every other race I've trained for I've had some *ahem* stomach issues on longer runs, but training for this one that didn't happen. I thought maybe I'd overcome it. Apparently not. So I had to wait at a port-a-potty. It cost me about 10 minutes. I knew at that point there was no way I could make up 10 minutes, I'm just not that fast a runner. Talk about disheartening. I plugged along, though, and did okay. I hit a wall around mile 8 and just wanted to be done. Last year at the race I kept having awful calf cramps for the last half, and I had some times time, too, though not nearly as bad as last year. Finally I got to the end of the race, and the husband had finished in his goal time, so he was along the finish chute cheering for me with a big sign he'd made. I was hauling ass at that point, I just wanted to be done. I think I sprinted the last 0.1 mile just so I could be done.
I paused my Nike app while on my bathroom break, which resulted in three separate finish times. I know only one is official, but I'm still counting it as three. The distance on my app was off (by 0.3 miles! WTF?! That's significant!), so I have the time when I hit 13.1 on my app, the time on my app when I crossed the finish line, and then my official time. I was able to make up a few minutes of my bathroom stop at least, so that made me feel a little better. And had it not been for that, I would have presumably finished comparable to last year, so I guess that's good?
Nike 13.1 time: 2:28:25
Nike finish line time: 2:32:30
Official race time: 2:39:38
I think I'm retiring from just half marathon races. I'll stick with running in triathlons, but I think my days of just running races are done. I really didn't enjoy it at all.
