First, some background. I never actually started running with long races like this in mind. I just started running because
- I thought running a 5k seemed like a novel idea, and
- Breathing heavy 30 seconds into a game of hide and seek with the kids got old.
Anyway, as those of you know who have followed my blog, I found this program called Couch to 5k, and then another one called One Hour Runner, and at some point during a 6 mile run I decided to try to run 10 miles and I did. That’s when I realized that a half marathon was probably within reach and so I started following this program by Hal Higdon (who is apparently a pretty big deal, but I didn’t know that at the time) in hopes of running the Thunder Road Half Marathon on Dec. 13.
In the 8 months I’ve been running, I can honestly say I’ve only had 2 negative experiences. The first was when I bought my Garmin Forerunner 305. The Garmin is great, but that’s when I realized that my Nike+ sportband wasn’t measuring my runs as accurately as I had thought. Seems the Nike+ had been giving me as much as a quarter to a half mile extra distance which made my pace times appear to be quicker than they actually were. Bottom line: in order to run my first half under 2 hours, I was going to run around a 9:10/mile pace which I thought I could do according to my Nike+ runs, but the Garmin was more accurate and told a different story. To sum up in a word: crap! The likelihood of me breaking 2 hours looked a bit slimmer.
The second bad experience was 2 Saturdays before the race when I pulled up with what was either a cramp or a sign of overtraining in my left calf. I was just at the end of a 12.25 mile run and it hurt for a couple of days. I iced it, rested some, really cut down my mileage for 2 weeks before the race and still wasn’t sure what would happen. Now, with all that said, onto the race. Continue reading
