This is what a runner looks like

A few weeks back I saw a facebook post asking for submissions to a survey being run by UPMC Health Plan, the main company sponsoring the Pittsburgh Half Marathon here in just under 40 days (!). The topic of the survey was 'This is What a Runner Looks Like' and they were collecting stories and thoughts from people running the half marathon, including things like what makes you a runner, what do you feel when you run, why do you run, that sort of thing. They asked for a photo, and I included one I had Mike take at the PERSAD Donut Dash last fall - it's a far sight better than most actual race photos, and I'm holding a super tasty treat in it, as well as wearing the shirt from my very first race (coincidentally the UPMC 5k associated with the marathon, back in 2015)!

They were looking for people to possibly feature on social media leading up to the race, and while that isn't necessarily something I'd always have gone for, I figured at the very least I have an interesting story and it might be fun to give it a shot and see what happens. So I filled it out, putting a reasonable amount of thought into my responses because why bother if I'm not going to put at least a little effort into it, and then basically forgot about it. Life has been pretty hectic lately, and that's on top of half marathon training! So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I opened my email today to read...

On behalf of UPMC Health Plan, I’d like to thank you for your submission to our “This is What a Runner Looks Like” UPMC Health Plan Pittsburgh Half Marathon campaign! We received so many amazing stories and were blown away with the participation.

As part of our campaign, I'd like to take your portrait and feature it at this year’s half marathon expo, and possibly on our social media channels as well.

So that happened! I'm waiting to hear back from them on the timing of a photo shoot that will happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. The really girly part of me is wondering if they'll be providing hair and makeup and that sort of thing, and what I should wear (running outfit? regular outfit?). I actually did a little happy dance at work when I found out, and I'm absolutely entertained by the idea of getting to take a picture with myself at the expo!

I've been valiantly trying to keep crazy life stuff from getting in the way of half training, mostly successfully. I had a really amazing run last Tuesday (only a few days after my near-PR 5K) where I almost broke my 5K PR again and didn't even feel like I was working super hard. The weather was absolutely stunning and I wore the Atayne singlet I'm planning on wearing for the half for its first test run. It is so light and so comfortable - highly recommend!

Unfortunately that was the last easy run of the week as we had a project at work get kind of out of hand and I had to put in a couple hours from 8:30-10:30 that night. Wednesday the weather turned back towards the colder side and it was super windy, and thanks to work being nuts during the day, and missing sleep the night before, my legs basically felt like garbage and my mind was totally scattered. There was delicious Japanese food, so at least there's that. I should have taken a video of the bonito flakes waving on our hiroshimayaki but I was too busy salivating at the time.

On Thursday, which was basically the worst, I got a call from the project manager at 5:58am (waking me up two minutes before my alarm and confusing the hell out of me, let me tell you), worked from 7am-4pm, and again from 6pm-midnight, mostly on conference calls doing troubleshooting with developers and testers. During that small break I managed to get my run in (thankfully only 3 miles but I kind of wished it was longer since I knew I would have to go home and work) and make/eat some dinner, but it was definitely less than ideal. It didn't help that I knew it was setting me up for a rough Saturday long run, the longest I've done so far this year and this training cycle, 8 miles. And boy, was I right.

I did have something to look forward to for Saturday, though - midweek I'd decided (after my various phone woes and then not having data for the Shamrock Shuffle) to pull the trigger on a Garmin 230 with chest strap (Purple Strike!). It arrived Friday and I had a little time to set it up in anticipation of Saturday's run. I'd ordered myself some other feel-good running treats and it was nice to get those, too (another secondhand pair of my beloved Ride 7s, some new laces to make it easy to tell them apart from my other pair in the same color, a stick of Body Glide, and a new band for my fitbit) - retail therapy!

The best thing that happened Saturday (other than the new gear!) was definitely the weather - it was basically perfect. Unfortunately my legs and body were not interested in doing 8 miles at 11:30 pace. The first 6 were with SCRR's morning group run, and there were enough people in the "11:30-12ish" group that I was reasonably buoyed by the company. The way weekend runs work is they tend to group shorter runs together, so our route was really the 3 and 6 mile route, and we looped by the starting point at the halfway mark to drop off anyone who was stopping. I felt more or less fine at that point, but the pressure was on as there wasn't anyone officially leading the second half of the run.

Typically we have club leaders/ambassadors/coaches who take charge of the pace groups, but especially for slower paces and shorter distances, that seems to be less available than for faster and longer distances. And the coach who'd run with us for the first half was splitting off to do her own thing. Oh well. What it boiled down to was that I ended up volunteering to pace miles 4-6 when no one else was willing (hey, that new watch sure comes in handy). I guess overall it was good that I had the group there to motivate me to keep it up, though we did slow down more to the 12ish side of that pace range overall.

When we got to the end of the second loop... I still had to go out for two more miles! At this point I definitely wasn't feeling it and was glad that Mike was there to keep me company, because it if had been down to just me I might have packed up and headed home. We slogged it out though, me constantly apologizing for my pace, but in the end looking at the stats it really wasn't as bad as it felt at the time:

My heart rate had been way up, though, probably thanks to being fairly wiped out before I even started. At about mile 7, though, I realized that I was basically feeling the wall I used to hit somewhere around mile 2 or 3. And so as much as it sucked, I was still doing pretty great all things considered.

The rest of Saturday consisted of grocery shopping and being kinda lazy, after which I was rewarded by attending another amazing night of Hamiltunes PGH - which deserves its own separate post some other time.

This week I'm taking it pretty easy. Saturday morning I woke up with a bit of a twinge in my hip/butt - it's definitely time to replace my mattress - and while I didn't feel it during my run, it was definitely a little cranky afterwards, and then Monday's gym session kind of irritated it again. Feels fine today so hopefully that trend continues. Ran an easy 3 with the "new" shoes today and tried to work on keeping my heart rate down, mostly successfully. Tomorrow I'm going to do the first 5-mile weeknight run in this plan, and then go to Pita Pit and REI with Mike to help him use his member coupon. Thursday I'm only working a half day and then getting in my last 3 before Saturday's Hot Chocolate 15K in Philadelphia!

We leave Friday morning, will hit the expo for packet pickup and check into our airbnb in the afternoon, acquire delicious traditional pre-race pizza, and attempt to sleep before an early morning on Saturday. I'm in a "preferred" corral (because they are very generous and allow you to submit times to qualify for paces up to 11:30) and am supposed to arrive at the start anywhere between 6:45 and 7:45am - we'll probably actually start around 8:15 if all goes well so I'm aiming to get there closer to 7:15 as it's not going to be super warm. I've been watching the forecast and it's been more or less consistent but the chance of rain has dropped a bit for the past couple days, as well as the projected temperature. Right now they're saying 48-51 degrees, about 15% of precip, overcast, and winds around 10-12mph. Not ideal (I really hate running in wind) but could be a heck of a lot worse. Going to be packing a few options for tops, I think, and maybe picking up a thrift store sweatshirt to "donate" at race start.

More to come from Philadelphia!