My father-in-law was signed up, and he wanted some company. We run together whenever Ryan and I visit St. Charles, and we are very well suited running buddies. We have some great conversations, so I'm excited. He's wanting to run about 9 minute miles, and it'd be nice to break 2 hours; right in line with what I'm good with!
It's the biggest and priciest race I'll have ever done. The other 3 half marathons I've ran were not dinky or anything, just smaller, more community based affairs put on my local running groups or a locally-owned running store. So while it cost a chunk of change ($86 prior to June 30th, includes processing fee and a $10/coupon code I found), I think running a big race with crowds and all kinds of fancy things will be fun, and a cool experience. It felt WASTEFUL signing up for it, isn't it funny how it can be hard to spend $ on yourself like that? For some reason the smaller amounts don't feel that way to me.
Since my hubs is a cross country coach, I lucked out training schedule-wise. He worked in my weekly Zumba classes and my beloved elliptical (I can watch Toddlers and Tiaras while on that thing, it's beautiful), which was very sweet of him. I'm on week 3 of the training schedule, and so far have only slacked off on not doing 1 40-min elliptical session, which I plan to make up...sometime. When I started this training stuff, I was working out maybe 3 times a week, so getting back to a regular schedule has been an adjustment. This weekend, my appetite caught up-and then some-with all this increased activity...all I want to do is sit around and EAT, which doesn't defeat the purpose, but it's lame.
This was my first 1/2, part of the Frostbite Series in St. Louis' Forest Park. I didn't own any hardcore tech running stuff, and I froze my ass off. Now I have tights and a zip up top lined in cozy fleece that get me through chilly days.
And here's one 1/2 marathon I did with my mom last September. I hadn't trained at all and I still have no idea how I finished.
And the other one went completely undocumented. It was 3 weeks after the 1st one, and it was so cold the water in the cups at the water stops was frozen solid.
I'm a much better spectator. This looks so much more comfortable!
Nerd alert: I printed off my training schedule, hung it up on my office wall and cross my completed work outs off in red ink.
Are you training for anything?
I'm running the Baltimore half in October, and then I think two weeks afterwards we are doing one in Pennsylvania that involves pretzels and beer (it starts at 10am, which is part of the appeal, and so then you start drinking beer at noon and it's not weird).
ReplyDeleteI did a half marathon that we crash-trained for in 5 weeks, which, while I don't recommend, was surprisingly not that bad. It turns out that a lot of long distance running is muscle memory, and once you've made it through those long runs, it's just easier in the future.
Just read your blog. thanks for posting, hoping to way movies here soon.
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