A Much Delayed Update

I think the last thing I put on this blog was a race recap for the San Antonio Marathon, which was now many, many weeks ago. Yikes. So what the heck have I been up to in 3+ months? Here it is, in much abbreviated form, with the zero date being the SA marathon.

Weeks 1-3: Recovery
After Grandma’s Marathon in June, I recovered very quickly, and 11 days later I was able to do a light workout - a tempo at roughly 5:45 pace. This time? Not so much. A week later I tried to help Emily do a workout, and ended up exhausted and sore for the next 5 days. 16 days post-race I finally felt good enough to do a short pickup (1 mile in 5:22), and by the end of the 3rd week I had gotten back up to 77 miles.

Weeks 4-9: 3M Half Marathon Buildup
After an awful post-marathon recovery, I felt like a moron trying to get ready to run a fast half marathon. Three weeks of recovery, and the last two weeks before the race is too late for the training to really take effect, so you’re looking at a whopping four weeks to actually prepare. I had been toying with the idea of doing the US Half Marathon Championships in June, and the standard to even get into the race is sub 1:10 (my PR as of 2012 was 1:10:58). To get a hotel room, you have to run sub 1:09. That was the optimistic goal, but it required a two minute PR.

So I put in some good work. A couple of tempos in the 4-5 mile range at around 5:20 pace, a 10 mile race at 5:30 pace, a few other key workouts, and mileage for the six weeks leading up to the race of 104, 113, 112, 93 (Emily and I went on vacation with my family during this week), 108, 102. During that last week, I had basically resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t coming around quite quick enough, and any thoughts of sub 1:09 were a bridge too far. My last big workout (5 days before the race) was a 6 mile tempo, which I did at 5:42 pace, plus two by 1600m at 5:14 and 5:13. Running under 69 minutes for a half requires running 5:15 pace for 13.1 miles. I may not know much, but given how much it hurt to run those two repeats, I did know that doing that 13 times without a break was unlikely.

3M Half Marathon
But what I didn’t count on when I was evaluating the worst case scenario during that last week was a big old Texas cold front blowing in on race day. The 3M Half Marathon course runs almost entirely North to South, and race day dawned with a wind from the North of 10-12 mph, with gusts up to 20 mph. Couple that with a net downhill course and you’ve got a recipe for fast times.

When the gun went off, I tucked myself into the back of the lead pack, and focused on feeling out the right pace. Everything felt pretty good, and I ended up going through the mile in 5:11, trailing the leaders by about 6 seconds. At that point I decided to be practical, not get ahead of myself, and slow down a bit for the next 2-3 miles. But come mile 3, I was at 15:32, and feeling smooth and easy. That would continue to be the case for the next 8 miles: 5 miles was passed in 25:55, 6 in 31:06, 8 miles in 41:27, 10 miles in 51:51 (46 seconds faster than my 10 mile PR from this fall), and 11 miles in 57:06.

Then the course turned decidedly hilly and into the (as previously mentioned) major wind. Mile 12 was 5:27, and mile 13 was 5:20, and I came into the final straight knowing that I would have to majorly choke to lose the time I needed for that entry and hotel room. I toughed out that horrible last minute or so, and crossed the line in 68:35 - 25 seconds to spare, and feeling very good the day.

At the beginning of 3M - photo cred to photowolfe!

Post 3M:
I took a few days easy after the race, and got back into workouts that Friday. I’ve done a couple of 5k road races, which did not go that great, and I ran an 8:51 3k at our newly formed (and awesomely fun) alumni vs current team track meet. That was a pretty solid race, and it was nice to get a win on behalf of the old folks. Workouts have been going great for the last 3-4 weeks, and I’m hoping to start updating details on that type of thing more frequently here. Next up for me is the 5k at the UIW track meet on Friday, where I set my PR last year.

At the Trinity Dual Meet...luckily our color was BLACK