The Patriot Half Marathon

You might have guessed it, but I'm a little behind on my race recaps. I have still been running my one (or more) races a month, but I just haven't sat down and written all of it down. I'm trying to catch up with the races now that our move and vacation are over, so just bare with me - I'll be flooding the blog with race recaps. 

The Patriot Half Marathon took place on Memorial Day 2012 and was my third ever half marathon. All I can say is, I love this distance! The half marathon distance is the furthest I have ever run; I wonder if I will like the full marathon distance as much? 

This race in particular was H-O-T! Luckily there was some cloud cover so that it wasn't too incredibly unbearable, but it was pretty toasty. And there were hills. And I had to run up them - it felt like in both directions (it was a keyhole course I believe). The course started at the high school football stadium. Which was seriously nice because there was lots of room for vendors, parking, and my absolute favorite: REAL bathrooms and not port a potties. Oh how I loathe port a potties! 

I went to the bathroom about 30 minutes before the start, and headed down next to the start line to watch the start of the 1 mile kids fun run. They announced that the half marathon would be starting in two minutes. And I immediately had to pee again. I didn't think that there would be time to go back up to the stadium and back to the starting line before the actual start of the race, so I just held it. Running 13.1 miles while having to pee sucked big time. I really should have just gone, but, I REALLY hate port a potties and my pace was AWESOME so I didn't want to stop and use the port a potties they had set up along the race course. I think next race, I really need to wait until the last minute to use the bathroom and not go so early. Anyway, that's enough about my having to pee :) 

Like I mentioned earlier, I had an awesome pace. For me anyways. I kept about an 11 - 12:30 minute mile pace for the race. My last half marathon's average pace was 13:15. This time, I didn't even dip into the 13 minute mile pace once. How cool is that?? As I also mentioned, it was pretty darn hot. I'm talking in the 80's around the start of the race. Or at least close to. Plus humidity. For the half marathon, they had 15 water stations. I took water at each station just because I was worried about dehydration due to the high temps. They also provided towels dipped in water to wash your face off or put on the back of your neck. That made a huge difference in my body's core temperature. They were supposed to have gels at mile 7, but I didn't see any of those. Luckily, I had crammed about 4 gels in my SPIbelt and was able to just use my own gels for the race. 

Another cool feature was pace groups. They had a nice range of pace groups as well. I started out with the 2 hour pace group (knowing that I would not be able to keep up), and was passed by the 2:30 pace group. But guess what? I was NOT passed by the 2:45 group. My goal was to finish this race around 2:45. I did 2:38:55. How AWESOME is that???? This is yet another PR for me and I could not be happier. I'm already signed up for my next half marthon - The Hottest Half in August. The heat will definitely be a challenge at this race and I am trying to mentally and physically prepare for it by running outside more and more. Actually completely since I no longer have a gym membership. For that race, I'm hoping to be around 2:35 for a race completion. I'm thinking the heat (and my general lack of running the last three weeks) will affect my time, but we'll see. I love racing! In fact, I already signed up for the 2013 Patriot Half Marathon for next Memorial Day. I hope next year I can totally rock that race and manage a much better time. Each race shows a slight improvement. Can't wait to see how far I've come next year!! 

Jumping and Napping

Today I met up with my meetup group of mommas and kids and went to Jump Mania out in Plano. The last time we went (which was our first time), the kids kind of stuck near me and didn't really venture out to the bounce-houses very much. This time, though, they were everywhere! Piper mostly played with the cute play kitchen/house/BBQ stuff that they have there, but Danny bounced through every play structure that they had. Twice. He loved it. And I was able to actually talk to the moms (and one dad!) which was nice too. I love my moms group, but I sometimes wish that we had like weekly moms only activities to really get to know the moms a little better. It's hard to interact when one of us is constantly chasing a kid!

The kids both came home tired though, and for 20 minutes, they both napped. It was glorious! I was working while they rested/napped, so it wasn't like I really had genuine time to myself, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I'm trying to work extra this week since I'm not focusing on working out, but that is SO hard to do when there are so many other things I would like to be doing. Namely, not working haha I'm reading the second book in the Outlander series - Dragonfly in Amber. I think technically it's supposed to be a period romance novel, but I think it is so much better than a romance novel! Not that I've really read many romance novels, but I have a ton of preconceived ideas about them ; ) and this book is better than those preconceptions, so clearly, it can't be a romance novel. It has a lot of Scottish history in it too, and I am really liking that. The point is, though, that I am enjoying reading this book and don't really want to put it down. Especially when my choice is reading or working. But reading books doesn't bring in extra money, and working does. I'm a slave to my part-time paycheck. What can I say?

I have been tapering very nicely. And by tapering I mean not exercising at all. Tomorrow morning I'm going in for a one - two hour workout, but tonight, I'm just icing and resting and preparing mentally for my race. Hungry Runner Girl had a great post today about mental toughness and I really thought this was timely for me. I think running half marathons (and I'm sure further distances) requires a certain amount of mental preparation and "toughness" to finish the race. I think that's why I love distance running because it is a mental sport. And I love it.

Update on the Reset

I am so proud of myself! While I haven't hit the 160's yet, they are RIGHT around the corner. This morning I weighed in at 172.0 - which is huge because it was the Monday after a holiday weekend and a Mom visit. Family visits (which we have a lot of here recently) and holidays are super hard for me to lose/maintain weight. There are just so many treats around and so much going out to eat. But all this weekend, I just told myself that if I really want to see the 160's then I have to realize that family visits and holidays are going to happen and that I can't let them stand in my way. So I didn't. We even ate out and I stayed right on track. Go me!

I've also been drinking water like crazy. Like 90 - 120 ounces a day. I had been drinking about 40 ounces of water a day and about 48 - 60 ounces a day of pop. It was diet pop, but still, not all that great for you. I'm hoping the increase in water is helping me flush all the junk out of my body and filling me up so I'm not just mindlessly snacking.

I kept pretty busy this weekend too. I ran 10 miles on Saturday (in 2hours, 10 minutes!) and then did the Run Like a Mother 5k on Sunday with my Mom (race recap coming soon). It felt good to run so much and keep my legs moving. Today, I'm taking a rest day - which is good because I have a major headache. These weather changes we are having here in Texas are killing my sinuses!

I joined a running group this weekend too. It's a meetup group that meets on Saturday mornings in Plano and does their long runs together. I'm going to my first one this Saturday and I'm hoping that they can help motivate me to run a faster pace. I really want to run my marathon in 5 hours or less. That just means I have a lot of work to do between now and December. My last half marathon was done in 2:53 minutes - and my half in two weeks (from today - eek!) I'm hoping to do closer to 2:45. I'm contemplating signing up for the Hottest Half in August - but I'll probably take that one slow because of the heat. It will definitely be a challenging run!

Rock N' Roll Dallas Half Marathon

Half Marathon Finished in: 2h53min
5k Finished In: 35:32
10k Finished In: 1:15:48
Pace: 13:15

In the words of my daughter's favorite TV show character, Dora the Explorer, "We did it! We did it! We did it! Hooray!" Yesterday, my dad, KL, and I all ran 13.1 miles. What an exhilarating experience! My Dad got in Saturday, and then we went and picked up our race packets at the Expo. I discovered Sweaty Bands were at the Expo, and my Dad bought two for me for my birthday. He also got me the CUTEST little SPIbelt that I have ever seen. Pink plaid?!? Yes please!

After that, we had some BBQ for supper and then my Dad spent some time hanging with the kiddos. He hadn't seen them in a long time (since D was 20 months old and since P was 6 months old!), so he was excited to get in there are play with them. My kids are usually a little stand-offish, but they both jumped right in there and loved on their Papa. It was awesome! After they went to bed, we stayed up a little and got our gear in order and made plans for the morning. My first half marathon (and only other previous half marathon) I did, I was super late to the start line and started about 15 minutes after everybody else and didn't have my number all the way on, and it was just a nightmare. It was nice to be prepared and even early this go-around.

KL showed up bright and early at 6am, and we were off to Fair Park for the bus to the start line. The bus line moved really quickly, and it was already pretty warm out (although I was cold, everyone else said it was warm). The buses were super nice - they even had seatbelts on them. Fancy! When we got to the start, we waited in the lines for the ever-lovely port-a-potties. I hate public bathrooms. Port-a-potties are like my arch nemeses. For realz. I despise those things. I always walk out feeling like I need a shower. Ick! After that, we went to our corral (Number 11!) so that we could line up - the other corrals had already started while we were in the icky-port-a-potty line.

The race started, and I plugged in my Ipod and took off. Generally, I'm a s-l-o-w runner. But when you put me in a race, I want to prove myself and run fast. This does not work to my advantage in long runs, because I get tired. It took me until about mile 4 or 5 to really find my pace and settle into it. As you can see from my times at the top, my 5k was done in 35 minutes. That is pretty fast for me! I was proud of that number. I had to walk a little after mile 2 (only probably a quarter mile or so) and then I started running again. I was totally unprepared for the number of hills that were on this course. I'm sure I could have actually *looked* at the elevation information provided by RNRDallas, but that would have too smart of me. I just assumed since most of Texas is flat, that the course would be flat a well. That was not the case. Holy F! There were a lot of hills! Nothing as bad as the dreaded Doomsday Hill from the Spokane Bloomsday Run (that is one killer hill!), but still some pretty long, low-grade hills that felt like my calves were on fire as I was running up them.

We ran through a gorgeous park with a reservoir/lake thing that had lilly pads throughout and flowers and it was just beautiful, and then we also ran through some neighborhoods that I would just LOVE to live in. Giant mansion like houses with impeccably manicured lawns and flower gardens. Seriously, I could get used to that. Around mile 8, I had to walk another quarter mile or so. By that point, I had just downed my third energy gel thing, and I was fading fast. I told myself that I could do it, and put my feet in motion again. At mile 10, I was starving. My peanut butter toast and banana I had for breakfast was long gone, and I was just exhausted and soo hungry. I took one more energy pack and ended up walking from mile 10 to mile 11. When I hit 11, though, I told myself that I had to do this. I had to RUN. I made it 12. Exhausted, hot, tired, and REALLY having to pee (but not wanting to stop to wait in a line for a port-a-potty). I thought about running into a Starbucks I saw and using their bathroom, but thought if I stopped, I might not be able to start again. So I kept on trucking. I told myself that I was bringing it in. Only 1.1 miles to go, and I could do this! I saw the Dallas Star ferris wheel that is in Fair Park (the end of the half), and I put my energy into it. When I got to 13 miles, I sprinted. I passed people left and right. I pumped my arms, propelled myself forward and finished in under 3 hours. Wahoo!

I went to the designated meeting place and waited for my Dad and KL. I felt really shaky and just not good. I grabbed a water, a banana, a high-protein cookie, and a Gatorade. I sat down and tried to do some gentle stretching, but man, my muscles were screaming!! KL and my Dad shortly joined me. This was KL's

I was silly and didn't ice anything yesterday, so I am sore today. My calves don't really feel that bad, and I am giving full credit to my Zensah compression sleeves for that. Way to go compression sleeves - you DID it! Seriously, compression sleeves are my new BFF. I now want compression leggings because my hips and thighs are hurting so bad. So bad, in fact, that last night I had trouble sleeping. I also got a pretty decent sunburned face, and some hilariously awesome compression sleeve tan lines on my legs. I have taken some tylenol and am hoping that my soreness lessons by tomorrow. I'm planning on doing a 2 - 3 mile walk tomorrow to ease myself back into exercise. It would be nice to not feel like kaka while I'm doing that. I totally pushed myself on this race. Normally, I only run about 1 mile, then walk a 1/2 mile, then repeat until I'm done running. I only walked 1.5 miles of this whole race. I'm pretty sure that is why I am so sore. Either way, I am proud of myself and looking forward to improving my time on my next half marathon in May!