I’m running my first half-marathon this weekend and to say I’m nervous would be an extreme understatement. I haven’t slept well this whole week and my mind keeps going over and over how the race might go. My goal when I first decided to run a half-marathon was to finish (obviously) and second, to break two hours. Breaking two hours at my first race is a bit ambitious but wasn’t out of reach based on my last 5k time (25:24) and training runs (8 plus miles at a 9:30 average). It seemed reachable until this past month, as I mentioned in my previous post, when my training runs kind of went all over the place the month of May. Everything went great going into my 5k the first week of April. Approaching the end of April, I was still optimistic but looking back I logged a few too many miles, next to zero strength training sessions and not enough true rest days. For some reason I felt I needed to change up my training plan to match more closely with plans for other runners. Problem being I’m not other runners and I should’ve thought about how my training went great for my 5k and would’ve continued to translate well to the upcoming half-marathon with focusing on increasing my long runs. Frustrating that I couldn’t have given myself this advice in April. Hindsight always works like that. Current race day goals are to first and foremost finish the race. According to the race website, I have 3 hours and 30 minutes to complete the race which should be plenty of time even with modifying my goal race pace. Running a sub-two-hour half is very unlikely at this race for a few reasons: one, I have had a few off weeks, two, I didn’t log as many long runs as I anticipated, three, I’m coming off an injury, and four, it’s going to be hot and humid. I sound a quite pessimistic here but simply trying to be realistic with my current fitness level. I think at this point my best plan is to use this race as a training race to get a feel for this distance and to have more racing experience. I already have some fall half-marathons picked out where I can expect cooler temperatures and a lot more training time to get prepared in order to meet my sub-two-hour goal.
My taper this week is going well but it is a bit different than my other tapers because of the time I have taken off to heal and try and get over these shin splints. In the past my tapers have felt like a big break and I’m just itching to run faster on my runs. However, now I have simply been taking it easy in fear of creating another injury or bringing back my previous one. Instead of wanting to run faster I’m afraid to push it at all. How this will affect race day will be determined. I biked one day and I did two easy stroller miles along with some short 30 minute leg workouts. The rest of the week I plan on just stretching and keeping my legs loose with a possible short shake out run on Friday.
This weekend’s race is an out of town race so I have to make sure I have everything packed that I might possibly need for race day. I’m currently checking things off my list as I write this so I will be including my packing list in this post (see below). I definitely don’t want to forget anything as going out to buy something last minute is not only costly but could be difficult depending on what I could possibly forget. And if you follow the advice of nothing new on race day the dilemma of having to buy something becomes even more difficult.
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