Monday, February 11, 2008

PR - Slowest Half Evah...

...but, I'm happy with it. Considering the lack of training I have been doing, I was pleased with my performance on Saturday.

Barbie came and picked me up Saturday morning, later than planned. We hurried and got down there, still 45 minutes early! 45 minutes of dread.
The weather was fantastic, it was 38 degrees and sunny at the start, so I decided to wear shorts with long sleeves. This turned out to be the perfect choice.

At 9am, we were off. There were 95 runners that showed up for this one- a pretty good turnout for this race. I dreaded running 13 miles, considering the small amount of training that I have been doing for the past few months. Garmin really did his job, though. I think back about how much better I could have ran last year, if I had Mr Garmin to beep at me when my heart rate got too low!

At around the 4 mile mark, I didn't think I was going to be able to finish the thing. It was all mental- I just didn't feel like I could run 9 more miles. That was when I started letting my mind wander. I started thinking about what we were going to do for the rest of the day, how good a hot bath was going to feel later, and how excited mom was going to be when I brought her the picture that Barbie photo-shopped for her.

When I got ready to start this race, I figured I would run it in 2:25 minutes or so, my last couple of longer training runs have been around an 11 minute mile. Around mile 11, I realized that I was going to finish in under 2:15. I was extremely pleased with my official finish time of 2:14:36, or a 10:17 min/mile.
Yes, this was my slowest half marathon, by 10 minutes or so, but I was still very happy with it.

The rest of the day was nice, we went for Mexican and I had a couple of margaritas (yum!). I went home and delivered the pictures, that mom LOVED. I spent the rest of the day doing a whole lot of nothing! It was a fantastic day!

3 comments:

Carly said...

WTG!!! You did great and you should be very proud. You deserved those margaritas.

Viv said...

Cheers to those well deserved ritas'!! Great job, Tammy! You were so concerned about it, but you have delivered an outstanding time!! That is awesome to let your mind wander for 9 miles, and get through supah fast! I hope you enjoyed the bath.
Here is to a quick recovery 4 ya..

Delane said...

Awesome.

I aspire to run 11 miles right now, you are a speed demon in my book!!!