13.1 Orlando = PR
Six months after knee surgery! First half marathon of the season! And a PR!
After running with Mike on the clay trails last weekend, he told that he was going to run a half marathon on Sunday in preparation for Disney. I had a 20 mile training run on my schedule and I had 3 options.
1. Run 20 miles alone in Melbourne. Alone but the water views are awesome.
2. Go up to Cocoa and run the Space Coast marathon course.
3. 2 mile warm up. Half marathon race. 5 mile cool down.
It was already a crazy weekend with soccer with soccer games in Melbourne and Tampa so might as well make it crazier!
I figured if I could get to bed early enough at my parents Saturday night then it was doable and if the logistics of all of the games went okay on Saturday. Only thing that really threw me off was the heat at the games on Saturday. It was much hotter than expected and I had to stay on top of my fluids. It was also much warmer on race morning than expected. I was a little concerned about the heat after my 2 mile warm up. I was already drenched in sweat.
I didn't taper for this race. As much as I wanted to PR, I know that my main focus must be on Disney right now. However, I didn't do a tempo this week and used the half as the tempo instead. I ran 55 miles in the 7 days leading up to this race. My plan for the race was a 7:00 minute first mile and then go for a 9 mile tempo at 6:45, finish at whatever. Unfortunately, I still hit 6:45 on the first mile. I'm not too upset about it because I was still under control and hadn't taxed myself too much. There were about 5 women in front of me that went out much harder. By mile 5 I had passed all of them. At that point I also wanted to make sure I stayed in the lead and didn't lose the race. I readjusted my pace a bit as a tactical decision. There was one bridge overpass right before the turn around. Basically you go over it and run .3 miles further and go back over it. That part was a bit exhausting but a great point in the race to see where the other women were behind me. Also, it was a huge motivator to see Mike as I came down the bridge!
Mike and I after the race! So awesome to see him back running again. The guy ran a 1:40 after 4 weeks of training! The guy is going to be crazy fast again!
I was really happy to be able to PR! It was my first half since knee surgery in May. It has been a lot of work to be able to hit the mileage again, much less speed. So to come back in my first race in a PR is a pretty good feeling!
First Place Woman!
The other two women in the picture won the 10K and 5K! So fun meeting them!
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