Trust The Process

4 miles @ 8:04 pace (treadmill)

My legs felt really tight today, probably from the long run and hills on Saturday.  Will do my last tempo run tomorrow before the half on Saturday.

5.5 miles this evening.  It was 74 degrees at 6pm which felt pretty hot although it was pretty windy along the river banks.  I broke out the racing flats to see how my ankle would do in them. 

.75 mile warm up @ 8:35 pace, 4 miles in 27:08 (6:28, 6:42, 6:55, 7:03), .75 cool down @ 9:00

The last two miles of the tempo run was into a pretty strong head wind, but I was clearly struggling near the end and my ankle was sore during the cool down.  Thinking I will pass on wearing the flats for the half.

Given my splits today and struggles during my long run last Saturday, I am going to run at a more conservative pace for the half on Saturday (thinking about 7:15 pace) with the hopes of having a little left in the tank for the last couple miles.  It has been very frustrating over the last month not being able to train the way I hoped due to injury, but hopefully I can look back at my training patterns in the future and find a stable base that my body can handle.   

4 miles @ 8:17 pace (treadmill).  It was in the mid 70s outside again, but it felt hotter than that in the gym today.  I wish I had brought my garmin with me in my gym bag to work today because I would have preferred running outside in the nice weather.

It was a great day for the race.  Temperature was 60 degrees and sunny at the start warming up to about 70 by the finish.

Finishing chip time was 1:34:01 (7:11 pace).  I missed my initial goal of 1:30 but the time beat my previous half marathon PR of 1:37:44 (9/18/11) and my previous course time of 1:54:19 (3/20/10).

Mile splits were as follows:

6:56, 6:49, 6:41, 7:03, 7:59, 7:43, 7:23, 7:17, 7:04, 6:55, 7:19, 7:29, 6:54

I was pumped up for the race at the start so I started out at a faster pace than planned.  Miles two and three were downhill so I wasn't too concerned that I was going faster than my planned pace.  I slowed down mile 4 closer to my planned pace as I remember miles 5-6 were going to be significantly uphill.  I struggled through the up hills of miles 5 & 6 and I was questioning at the time if I would have enough left in me to finish strong.  Miles 7 & 8 still had some uphill but not as severe as before.  I got through these hills without as much struggle as miles 5 & 6 and was ready to pick up the pace a bit for miles 9 & 10.  I slowed down a bit for mile 11 as I was fighting a little cramp in my stomach and we were running right into the hot sun.  I picked it up a bit at the beginning of mile 12, but the last climb of the course (outside of the last .2 miles) killed me.  I had enough left in me to push for the final mile which I was happy to run sub-7.

Overall, I was happy with my performance given some of my struggles in the last few weeks.  I was also happy that my ankle held up during the race and hasn't felt too bad after.  I napped after the race for about an hour but was then sightseeing for most of the afternoon in DC.  It wasn't until about 7pm that my ankle and arch started feeling really sore.

I am going to focus my next few weeks on getting in some strong tempo runs getting more comfortable running sub-7 minute miles as well as some solid long runs while taking my other runs during the week really easy.  My next race is a 10k in three weeks.  I definately plan to PR in this race.