Finishing my first half-marathon last Sunday was amazing. Last October,
when I signed up, running 13 whole miles, all in a row, felt like such a
stretch goal, I was actually scared to tell people what I was training
for.
My longest training run to that point was 5 miles, which meant that I
had a ways to go. I can't remember exactly what was keeping me from
running, but when I look back at my calendar there are a lot more
workouts crossed out then checked off through October and November, but
the training was ramping up with or without me, so I jumped back in to
it.
The training successes were awesome: I ran my first 10k (a new longest
run) in December with the team, then had a PR at the 5K in January. I
*enjoyed* a "double digit run" running 10 miles (in the snow) and I was
ecstatic when my main running buddy and I completed the full 13 miles training run in
February.
The tough training days were also important. If Sunday had gone poorly,
I'd like to think I could've drawn on the experience and used a bad
training day to help talk myself through it somehow. I also learned the
most when my body was mad about a workout: I learned that a steady diet
of Domino's Pizza is not the fuel my body needs to run a happy 10
miles. On a different run, I ended up 3 miles from home completely
bonked and walking it, so I learned to be better about carrying drinks
and snacks. I learned that an extra rest week won't kill you when it
was too icy to run and I "only" did 5 treadmill miles instead of 12.
None of the training prepared me completely for how little extra "umph" I
would have after 12 miles of Zone 2-3 running. My brain was ready to
run in Zone 4 like I'd been practicing at track, but my legs were
totally not into that idea. I did manage to increase the pace, and
Garmin tells me I had a lovely negative split, but my idea of how the
race would happen at the end was pretty different from how it actually
did. Learning to "race" something is pretty different from learning to
cover the same distance.
After finishing this run, I respect the Marathon, Half-Iron and Iron
distance races So Much More! I'd always thought they were extreme and
admired the dedication the training requires, but now the magnitude of
the challenge of actually racing such a distance is more real to me.
Overall, I'm thrilled with my training and result. Looking back at my
calendar sheets for the winter, seeing the workouts I did and
remembering how each "new longest" had seemed unrealistic a few months
earlier, it's impossible not to smile.
I'm also terribly excited by the pace I was able to keep for the race.
The 13 mile training run was done at a pace of almost 18 min/mile. The 1
hour taper run a week before the race was a pace of around 16:30
min/mile, so I'd been planning to try to keep a 16 min/mile pace and
speed up at the end. In the race itself, it felt easy to maintain a pace
in the 15 min/mile range until the 11th mile or so. After that, I
managed to speed up slightly, but it was no longer as easy. My goal had
been to finish around 3:30, so when I realized it was going to be more
like 3:15, it gave me extra motivation to maintain form and to try to
take longer steps for that last (impossibly long) 1.1 miles.
1/2 Marathon PR: 3:16:24
