Well - race weekend has arrived. Later today I will head down to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center to check out the race expo and pick up my bibs, shirts, and other assorted goodies! Oh, and try to find myself in the collection of photos that got taken a little while back for the "This is What a Runner Looks Like" thing.
Now that my first taper is nearing its end, it's time to reflect a little before I hop in the first of two race corrals this weekend, starting tomorrow morning. Of course, really I haven't been able to get the race off my mind for quite some time now, but at least at this point it feels appropriate to look back, and to think hopefully about what will come this weekend.
I've definitely learned some things, the first of which is that my mattress sucks, and the second of which is that I can only reasonably cut calories on the first half of a training plan. I've already missed one "goal," which was to be back to my original goal weight by race day. Halfway through the training cycle, work got crazy and I lost sleep, and wasn't giving my body the calories it needed to fuel my runs. I got hurt and only in the last couple of weeks have been able to run without feeling it afterwards. So - lessons learned. I'm going to take a few weeks after this to ease back into the mileage and keep it low enough that I can drop that last 10(ish) pounds and then start ramping up both the calories and the miles!
Before I got hurt things felt like they were going really well. I had an amazing 5K where I would have PRed if it was a flat course, and another training run (on the first truly gorgeous day of Spring) shortly after that where I almost PRed the 5K distance again. I finally got a Garmin watch/HRM strap... which led to the reaffirmation that I was probably running too fast during most of my training runs. Oops. I adjusted after my knee started feeling better again and while it was frustrating to see how slow I had to go to keep my HR under control, I'm committed to doing my next cycle with my HR in mind. I know that patience here will lift me to new heights in the future, even if it feels like I'm getting nowhere in the moment.
I had an awesome race in Philly, the 15K, and surprised myself at my capability to negative split, even though I probably shouldn't have been running 9 miles that day (or walking 11 more over the course of the rest of it!). I was feeling strong at the end of that race even though I had constantly sped up and was dealing with uncertainty about my knee. That gives me hope that now that I'm feeling recovered and rested that I can have a sort of repeat performance.
I hit a new distance PR on my last long run - 12 miles! It was a slow 12 miles - about 12:30-13:00 pace - but I did it, and felt reasonably fine afterwards, grumpy (recovering) knee and all.
I made new running friends. Considering how challenging I find it to interact with a lot of people (I suuuuck at small talk!), the fact that I found a couple folks who I'm always happy to see at group runs or around town is pretty great. I've been making an effort to interact more on the SCRR Facebook group, too, and have enjoyed seeing that lots of other people are feeling just as crazypants as I am about this whole weekend.
So - things have been accomplished, and largely I feel pretty good even though mistakes were made, because there were plenty of positives to balance them out. Over the past week my mind has gone into overdrive, and it seems like every spare second is spent pondering over some detail of this weekend. The weather, what I'm going to pack, what I'm going to eat, what I want to buy at the expo, the weather, the hotel we're staying at, getting into/out of downtown, the weather... you know, the normal runner stuff.
I'm so glad that we got the chance to preview the course so that I know first-hand where most of its tricky bits are (and the parts we didn't, I've either run before or checked out thoroughly via google maps).
The weather has been predictably Pittsburghy in that it's nearly completely unpredictable. Two weeks out it looked like it would be 75 and sunny, but over time that's been revised significantly and now it looks like 42 and rain, and the rain is still kind of a maybe. I'm glad I've had the chance to run in the heat some, as I feel like that will still be beneficial if it's chilly, but I'm still a little apprehensive about gear, since I'm determined to wear my rainbow singlet (with the addition of full sleeve compression arm warmers) for the half even if it means being cold for a few miles. For the 5K tomorrow, I'm almost definitely going to get rained on, but I can get rained on for 3 miles, whatever. I did add my capris to my race day pile for Sunday; I was originally planning on my Nike compression shorts, but the capris are high-waisted and super comfy, and only really cover up maybe an additional 6 inches on my legs, so I think they might end up being the right choice.
Goals? I figure I might as well put them down here, like they've been in my planner for months, for posterity's sake:
- A goal - absolute best-case scenario (aka probably not going to happen): 2:15
- B goal - more realistic: 2:30
- C goal - finish and enjoy myself
My best guess is that I'll come in somewhere around 2:25, but who knows. I surprised myself in Philly, and I'm hoping to really benefit from the energy of all the other runners and supporters on the course. Pacing-wise, I'd like to start around 11:00s and bring it down every few miles, but that's going to be so dependent on what's going on around me. The pacers for this race are based on finish time goals instead of minutes per mile, so I'm not going to be able to hang with a specific group since the 2:15ers will be in the corral ahead of me, and I'd really like to beat the 2:30ers (but will happily grab on to their group if I start struggling and they catch up), so it's going to be entirely my race.
Well, me, and about 50,000 other people who turn up to participate or watch. :)
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