Contrary to my recent blog history, I have been somewhat consistent with my running, spinning and swimming the past few weeks. This was mainly attributed to the fact that I had signed up for the Silver Strand Half Marathon and invited Shauna (friend, fellow blogger and previous co-worker while I lived in Phoenix) to come to San Diego for the weekend to run it with me. (By with me, I meant line up at the start together...I am a firm believer that two people rarely have the same pace on the same day and that each person should run his or her own race.) Although I cannot say that I diligently trained for this race, I did do three to four 10-12 milers the previous month (this is where it would have been nice to have kept up with my blog so you all could see exactly what I did or did not do...lesson learned!) and tried to complete one to two 5-6 mile runs during the week, in addition to a few swims and spin classes. Knowing that I am not at my fitness peak right now, I was curious to see how my body would react to this race.
As Shauna explained (I defer to her blog to obtain more details of the actual race course) the course was rather flat and straight, but we did have to fight a headwind most of the way. All of my splits were under 9 minutes except one, which was a 9:05 (that last little hill got me). I do not have my exact finishing time since my Garmin died at mile 12.9, but I believe it will be around 20-30 seconds under my PR, which I certainly cannot complain about. The clock time was 1:55.34, but I am still awaiting my chip time, which I believe was about 20 seconds behind the clock....my (hopefully previous) PR was 1:55.42.
As for today, my quads are a little tight, but oddly enough, my calves are what are bothering me the most. I rarely have much calf soreness and have never felt the calf fatigue that I am experiencing today (and yesterday during the race), even after speed workouts. I'm not sure why it decided to come out on race day!
Lessons learned this race:
1) I'm not as out of shape as I thought I was and with a little dedication, I can likely reach my sub 1:50 goal for my next half in January.
2)It's important to replace your batteries on your GARMIN on race day...no matter what the indicator tells you.
3) "Race Parking" signs can sneak up on you pre-race when you are not really thinking about driving and more focused on the race. (I hope the rest of the field was able to find their way around despite my inadvertant relocation of the sign.)
Overall, a decent race, a great race experience, and most importantly, an enjoyable weekend spent with a great person. |