Half Marathon Down and Completing Week 9

 198    Yvonne     Silver Spring  MD     417    35 F      31 30-39     1:58:40.1   9:04/M

http://www.charmcityrun.com/content/results/overall_mdhalf_15.htm

Yeahhh, I finished the half marathon in 1 hour and 58 minutes at a 9:04 min/mile pace. I came in 198th place...lol...out of 711 runners who ran the half marathon and 31st place in my age group (30-39).  I am  happy to be under 2 hours yet this shows I have A LOT of work to do still. You can view the race results at the link above!

This half marathon was a challenging one which took place in the community of Maple Law in Fulton, MD.  As a runner who ran the race last year put it, "its a challenging half" and a runner who stood behind me at start line said she heard it was "hilly"!  Yeah, so did I, yet I knew this going in and I wanted to train on this difficult route to really challenge myself through the tough parts.

Where there is a hill, there is a valley....kinda like life!  So I pushed through the hills and tried to devour the declined sections by pushing myself to really go faster during the downhills. The first 4 to 5 miles felt all up hill and it was really difficult for me to start this way as I did not warm up before the race which would have helped - maybe running about mile would have been ideal.  The rest of the course was rolling with up and down hills. Yet I am happy I got to the finish line. 

 

As to training, unfortunately I did not run yesterday as I had planned to do 4 miles Friday and I also missed my 9 miles on Tuesday.  I know....so this definitely affected me this morning. I am looking forward to hitting all my workouts next week.

On Thursday I did do the 6x800 speed workout on the treadmill and did all 800 meters (.50 miles) at a 8:00min/mile speed with a 200 meter (.25) lower speed pace in between.  I felt really strong at this pace and will now no longer go under 8:00min/mile or 7.5 speed on treadmill for speed work. 

Tomorrow -Sunday, I plan on doing  9 miles instead of the 40 minute tempo workout. I want to get this 9 miles under my belt for the week and will make up the missed 4 mile and 40 minute tepo workouts later in schedule.

It's Mother's Day tomorrow and that is why I said I plan on doing 9 miles....it will be really hard to get out of bed yet I am going to look at the workout as a gift to myself! 

Hope you have an amazing and Happy Mother's Day !