Lake Powell Half Finish
It's been over 12 hours since I finished the race and all I keep thinking is "I can't believe I ran a half marathon this morning." This half was the most miles I had run continuously ever, with my second longest being 10 miles. The rooms and I had decided we would kinda just do this race because it was Lake Powell and it'd be a fun, kinda easy race. So that's what we did. She's run 6 halfs up to this while I had never done anything over an open 5k. Its safe to say I was a bit nervous this morning.
Leading up to today I had trained very minimally, and I'm not understating this. Last weekend we ran 8.5 miles and bonked hard around mile 6. This was the farthest I had run in at least a year and a half. Prior to picking up triathlon, I had no reason to run over 10 miles at one time and when I'm not training for a specific distance I find it hard for myself to get out there and knock out more than 3 miles at a time. And the 800m runner I had been in high school didn't ever have super long runs unless it had been for xc but even then, I never raced over a 5k. Being a server, I find it hard to find the motivation to get out and run every day, so I hadn't run more than 3 days in the past two weeks. The girl inside me that's been running for 6 years was kicking herself because she knows that this is how you can get injured but, I did it anyway.
Reppin' the Oiselle Flockies!!!
The course was gorgeous so I'll just start off with that. We started off with the 1:45 pacer. My goal for the day was to just go under 2:00 but, if I could stay around 1:45 I'd be happy. My first few miles were like 8:30 pace and I was too comfortable and I wanted to go faster but I knew I had to hold back. It also had to do that we were down in elevation about 3,000 so yay oxygen! About 6 miles in, the rooms and I were talking about how we weren't really pushing a pace. We had fallen off the pacer as I had issues with the hydration system because I was just used to grabbing cups and going (Vacation Races does this awesome thing where cups aren't allowed as to reduce litter in the park. They use hydration pouches). Then at about mile 8, I asked her if she had wanted to go for it and catch the guy trotting along with the 1:45 sign. She replied with saying he was kinda far but I was ambitious and eager and feeling awfully competitive. I picked up the pace a little getting under 8 mins to try and catch him. But then the 1:50 pacer caught me. He was saying how he was a little faster than goal time so I held on with him until about a mile left where I kicked it in a little too early to try and catch a girl with American Flag shorts who I had assumed had been in our age group. Side note: I have this thing where I don't like to go home with just a finishers medal. I like to podium in my age group. I also have a superstition where I wear my green Nike sports bra and either podium or pr while wearing it. But anyways...I tried to catch the American Flag girl but wasn't able to. I panted till I got to the finish and probably ended up with a not so cute finish photo but who cares because it was a blast. I finished 4th in my age group with 1:46 while the rooms was 3 seconds behind me and placed 5th. We still got age group medals because Vacation Races takes it 5 deep! Woo!
With all this being said and it being a more running-specific post I feel like for some reason, I should announce that I'll be focusing more on solely running for the next few months. The cost to get back into really training for triathlon was really off putting when I moved and calculated how much it would cost for me to join the University's pool and gym so I could use the track. I found this to not be totally financially responsible for me at this time so it's back to my first love and I'm really excited. I even bought myself a Garmin 220 as an incentive and I love it.
I only ran 2 mins off my 10k pr today and 2 of the 6 miles were on hilly, sandy trails. So who knows what I could do. I think I'll make it a goal of mine to beat my high school 5k pr of 20:58. I feel like that's cake for me now. And there's already been talk of another half and then the full 26.2 within the next couple of months too ;)
