Training Update: Race Week!

I didn’t really do a whole lot of running this week besides the race. Frank and I spent a lot of the week going through our stuff. We’ve already brought two carloads to Goodwill! It feels great to be cleaning stuff out, and I can’t wait to move. I know, Kansas might not sound like the best place ever, but I am excited to have a new place with new trails to explore. We still have a lot of clearing out to do. We are leaving with only what we can fit in our small Kia Soul (along with us and two cats). I’ve already found running clubs and nice trails to check out. It should be pretty great.

Oh and this too…

I’m signed up for a half marathon in Kansas City! It’ll be my first race in the area and I’m pretty excited. The Hospital Hill Half is one of the oldest Half Marathons in the country. There are also like five hills. I have some work to do to prepare. Haha!

I’m sure you’re all wondering how I did at the Holy Half this weekend. It went… ok. Certainly not bad. Just ok. A few hours after posting my goals, I realized why I had never intended for this to be my goal race. I’ll talk more about in my race recap, but I did PR. I ran the course two seconds faster than I did A1A’s course AND I ran the whole thing at a pace that was 9 seconds faster than the A1A Half. The Holy Half was about 13.5, so I had a little extra to run. Since I did a lot of resting, I’ll go ahead and talk about the days I ran.

Wednesday: 3.6 miles at 8:35 pace

I ran with my usual run group, but tacked on about a half mile more by running from my house to our meet up. We had a pretty good time running our 5K route around Notre Dame. I was running with Lizzy, and I think she was feeling quite a bit better in her recovery. She was keeping us at a pretty good clip for a lot of it. Haha.

Saturday: 13.5 miles at 8:46 – Holy Half Marathon!

I won’t give too much detail, since I’ll be writing a whole post about this. I had a good time, but unfortunately had my period the morning of the race. I felt pretty icky and pooped out a little at the end. I finished the 13.1 faster than A1A by about two minutes, and finished the course two seconds faster than A1A. Having Lizzy there helped immensely, especially since I was not doing well with the mental game. She took off from me around mile 9, but I came in not too far behind. So I guess we can call this a PR. Afterwards, my husband wanted to go mountain biking, so I tacked on 10 miles of that too. I feel like that was worth mentioning.

Overall, I didn’t do much running this week, but I’m feeling a little better. I was getting stressed and burnt out about running and work. These next two weeks are really just going to be chill out weeks before I start my training for the Hospital Hill Half. I’m going to just finish my milage and run by feel, no speed work. I’ll start that up again soon. I think I just need a little break from structured workouts.

Thanks everyone for your support this past week. I know I’ve been a little negative and down. Work has been a bit better and your support really helped me get through the race.