My NBA-bound nephew had another exciting basketball game this morning, and since it started a bit later (at 10:00 am), I knew I had time for yet another long and winding run from my city to the city where he would be playing (please, if you’re a regular reader of TBC, don’t make that sound less impressive by commenting about how close the two cities are to one another).
I had time to get up, eat a quick bite, drink some coffee, read some awesome passages about how generous Christians should be (it’s part of a 30 day study I’m doing), and then I kissed the B99 good-bye before heading out into the frigid morning air while trying not to think too much about the warm bed I was leaving behind.
I definitely was not expecting this run to be noteworthy, and I started out at a very easy pace that I held for the first 3 miles. That’s when things started to change, because I had a nice downhill that made my fourth mile quicker, but it felt good and so I went with it. Nothing crazy, mind you, but the longer I ran, the quicker my pace got, and when I’d put my 10th mile in the books, I knew I had a shot to unofficially break my half marathon personal record (I say “unofficially” because this wasn’t a race, but I did officially run the distance), so I decided to finish out the long run with a fast finish.
My next 3 miles were 9:06, 9:02, and 8:41, and when I saw 13.1 on my Garmin, the timer read 2:02:38, which is 50 seconds faster than my fastest half marathon race. Of course, the new PR was very short lived, lasting only about 8 minutes, which is about how long it took me to run the last mile of my run. Dropping off the first mile of the run and adding the last, I realized that I’d bested my brand new time by almost another minute and a half (2:01:13). It’s not often that I’ll be setting PRs twice in one run, and to do it in a training run makes it even sweeter. Can’t wait to get to DC in March and shatter my HM times officially!
