Dave was able to run the half marathon, after finally recovering from his injury this spring. We received an email telling us that due to the heat, the start time was being moved up half an hour. Dave and I enjoyed our weekend away, going out for dinner and drinks the night before. The Chicago style pizza, bread sticks, and beer were a little too much for my system. I was in the bathroom continuously from 2 am to 3 am. I then had a difficult time eating breakfast, as my stomach was still feeling a bit out of sorts. This combined with temps rising into the 80's led to the worse time I've gotten on a half marathon. It probably didn't help that it was also the last week of school, so I'd been busy packing, completing grades, and maintaining some order with very excited students. My time was 2:24:08. After completing the GO! St. Louis Half Marathon in April in 2:12:32, I was very dissapointed. I was feeling tired at this race, and I could tell a mile in that I would not be performing as well as I had at the GO! I had also ran in a 10K at the end of April. I don't know if I was "overtrained" or if the combination of things led to this "worst race" time. Not that I haven't had an 11 minute average pace before, but it's been a year since I had that pace. Dave was able to complete his race in under two hours with a time of 1:57:17. He was pleased to get in under two hours. He ran the first mile with me, trying to help me improve my time until I told him to go on and run his race.
Here is a picture of us before the race, and one of us back home with our medals.
Dave and I wrapped up the school year with the last day of school the day following the race, and then one more final work day before our summer break began. We kicked off summer break by taking a 4 night get away in Hot Springs, Arkansas while the kids spent some time with their grandparents. It was a nice break. We still completed all of our runs, did some hiking, got a massage, had some nice meals out, and just enjoyed the break.
It was finally time for the last half marathon of the spring. We drove up to Grinnell, Iowa for the Grinnell Games Half Marathon. My parents and sister came along. It was going to be my mom and sister's first half marathon. They had followed a 16 week plan I created for them. I actually used the Hal Higdon beginner plan, but then repeated some of the weeks to help them build up. I also increased their long runs slightly, because they wanted to run the 13.1 distance once before the actual race. Dave completed his first sprint triathlon Friday night. He swam 400 meters, biked 6.6 miles and ran 2.5 miles. He completed it in 52 minutes. He was happy with this first tri and decided to sign up for another. Then on Saturday, we had the half marathon at 8:00. Of course, it was another hot day. Temps were in the upper 70's by start time and in the 80's by our finish. Dave took a few minutes off his time, finishing in 1:54:23. He was the 34th finisher out of 109 finishers. I finished in 2:16:57. I was the 80th finisher. It was nice running in a small town race. Less "hoopla" than the big city races, but much more personal. There was a guy that finished on second behind me that I had been back and forth with for about the last 3 miles. In the last half mile, I had gotten ahead of him. He tried to catch me with a sprint to the finish, but when I heard him on my tail I too picked up my pace. I managed to stay ahead of him through the finish! As silly as that little victory is, I felt powerful by keeping him from passing me. Also, though this is not a personal record, I'm pleased that it is my second best finish time, and I beat the heat this time with a much stronger finish than I had in Schaumburg. I kept my pace below 10 minute miles (with the exception of one mile at 10:06) through the 8th mile. On mile 9, a large hill followed by no water at the water station (there was Gatorade and ice chips, so I did get something, but I walked a bit longer than usual trying to chomp on the ice chips), caused me to slow down. On mile 10, I was able to get a little back into my grove at a 10:30 pace, but then on miles 11-13, I alternated running with walking with my pace averaging out into the 11's on each of those miles. My overall pace came out in the 10:20 range. Not terrible, but not as good as my 10:07 average pace in St. Louis at the GO! Half Marathon. But, I know not every race can be a PR, especially when doing several races in a short period of time.
Here's a pic of us before the race.
Here we are after the race with our medals! (We let Dad and Anna in the picture because they held signs for us during the run:))
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