My mom agreed to watch Marshall on Saturday AM during Glenn’s race- so I really had not reason to not get my long run in. I didn’t really want to do it- my legs were TIRED.

Coming off Ironman Muncie- I took 2 weeks of recovery. Still working out 6 days a week (what kind of recovery is that crazy?!) BUT, very gentle working out. Seriously it was a recovery. For the mind and body for sure. Just easy, easy stuff.

This past week, I ramped up the running. The original plan was to race the Chicago half September 8th, but I recently realized I have an important celebration on Saturday night, the night before and I don’t think I can miss it. So, I think I’ll be racing the Indy Women’s half instead.

Throughout the 70.3 training, I was running only 3-4 days a week (usually 3) and peaking out around 25 miles. The swim and the bike were the disciplines I focused on more.

This week, I ran 46 miles. For marathon training, that is a low mileage week for me, but after coming off so few miles for so many weeks, months really, my legs are FEELING IT.

So, about those 14 miles. I warmed up 1.5 miles with Glenn before his race started. I saw him off- stood in line at portapotties forever, talked to my friend Lauren who was running the quarter marathon. Naturally, I chatted with her and her husband, along with some Back on My Feet runners and waited to get back into my run until their race started.

I got to 8 miles before I made my way back to watch Glenn get finished. I was out running on random country roads and I kept getting nervous that- 1. I was going to get myself lost. 2. I’d miss him finishing because I was selfishly concerned with my own training run. 3. I’d get raped and murdered by some random scary person hiding in the cornfields I was running by.

After watching Glenn coming in, I hung out and talked to a million people and waited for the award ceremony so I could watch him get his 2ND PLACE award. (Proud wife here).

Basically it had been at least an hour since I’d stopped running. I thought about calling it a day and doing my long run today, but I REALLY wanted this rest day. Like really bad. So I convinced Glenn to do a cool down with me for at least some of the 6 I had left. He ran a mile with me, but legs were feeling beat up from the race, so I took off to get those last darn 5 over with. Talk about dragging out a long run.

It was all good though. When I started the first half of the run after our warm up and once Glenn had started his race, I had no plan on actually doing all 14 yesterday. I can’t believe how tired my legs were. I was running 8:45 miles and heavy breathing. I felt heavy and blah. I was glad to be able to finish the last 5 at a quick pace though.

I generally do not think breaking up the long run is a good idea, but flexibility is key sometimes and honestly, stopping for an hour and starting again is actually harder to do sometimes. Good mental training?

Here’s my rundown of training this week: I have quickly been reminded how much more impact and taxing on your body running is over biking and swimming. No wonder runners get injured so much. While I will always find running to be therapeutic (physically and emotionally), I have to say swimming is more so physically than running might ever be for me. Quality workouts and oh so friendly to the body.

Monday- Run, 8 miles- progression, starting at 8:15, ending at 6:30. Average pace 7:33.

Tuesday – Run, 4 miles, easy 8:24 pace, Swim, 1000 yds, easy

Wednesday–  AM Run- 6 miles, K Repeats. W/U 1 miles, 6 X 1K w/ 2 min rest. Pace for this workout was supposed to hit 5:58-6:02 mile pace, which is 3:42-3:46 per K. The paces I actually hit- 3:42, 3:45, 3:41, 3:49, 3:44, 3:48. (This was tough)

PM Run- Run, 3 Miles Easy- 8:30 pace

Thursday- Run, 4 Miles Easy- 8:00 pace, 1500 Swim (1000 free, 500 w/ some variation of breast, back, kick board and pull buoy)

Friday- Run, 8 Miles Easy- 2 mi w/ Back on My Feet at 10:50 pace, 6 on my own at 8:15 pace

Saturday- Run, 14 miles at 8:04 pace. This run was funny and my splits are all over the place. Here they are… I’m not sure if the same person was really running this. haha.

Mile 1- 8:29 
Mile 2- 8:28 
Mile 3- 8:47 
Mile 4- 8:40 
Mile 5- 8:05 
Mile 6- 8:11 
Mile 7- 8:23 
Mile 8- 8:04 
Mile 9- 9:18 
Mile 10- 7:50 
Mile 11- 7:32 
Mile 12- 6:48 
Mile 13- 6:35 
Mile 14- 7:46

Sunday- REST

Anyway- the exciting post coming up will be Glenn’s race report- this is just my rambling of training. CONGRATULATIONS to him for an amazing 2nd place finish. (You think the guy who won wasn’t wearing big Dr. Dre headphones. BUT he was.)

I hope you all are having a great weekend. It is absolutely amazingly gorgeous out today. I’m excited to chill and just enjoy it. 

I found an awesome teammate through twitter (how great is that… love twitter!) – Bryon Humphrey and he happened to be quite speedy. As a two person team you end up running six, 2.2 mile loops, handing off to your teammate every loop.

Waiting to start- look I’m all ready to work my watch & I still messed it up. #par

I’m training for a half marathon PR and thought this race would be a really good workout to add to my training. It’s a full marathon relay and you can run as an individual all the way up to a 6 person team. I’m very familiar with the race, as it is the same relay we do every fall for Back on My Feet. I’ve only ever been the race director though, never the runner.

Although it wasn’t a competitive field, we were still happy to win our division and take second place overall. The first place team was a 3 person male team and we ended up being just 23 seconds behind them. Had I known how close we were, perhaps I wouldn’t have wussed out so bad on my 5th lap.

Team “We will Rock You” post race.

I ran the lead lap for our team and had us in forth place behind 3 guys, it felt hard but I was trying to not go out too hard. I’m terrible with my watch and messed up my splits from the start. So, I’m not sure what my lap splits were for the 2.2, but I know what my mile splits were for the most part… there was a mile and half in there where I’m not sure what they were because I left my watch running on accident.

Lap 5 was really hard. I was starting to mentally check out and wanted to be done. I know that Katie and Michele both do 3 X 2 mile repeats and I always admire their speed and the work they put in for those sessions. Very fast.

It’s just a badass workout really. So doing 6 made me nervous and I knew I couldn’t go too fast if I wanted to finish under 7 minute pace.

Here are my mile splits: 

Lap 1 – 6:35, 6:37

Lap 2 – 6:41, 6:42

Lap 3 – 6:40, 6:42

Lap 4 – 6:45, 6:46

Lap 5 – 6:50, 6:50

Lap 6 – 6:47, 6:36

(There’s a mile or so missing in there from when I messed up my watch- who knows what the split was)

My goal was to run them 6:40-6:50 pace, so I’m happy with the consistency, but at the same time it made me a little nervous about my goal for when I race 13.1. Running 13.1 without stopping is a completely different story than running it in 2.2 mile segments with 13 minute breaks in between. I’m not sure which is harder. I think they are both hard in different ways. When you do the stop and go thing, your body is just starting to get into, “ok, I think we are done working out mode” right when it’s time to ramp it back up. And obviously with the no stop and go thing, you get no breaks. Both hard.

Glenn brought Marshall out to cheer me on, but they only stayed a few minutes- it was really cold!

For anyone looking to do a fun relay with your friends – consider the Back on My Feet 42K Relay coming up in September. If you are training for a race, it can serve as a great speed session. Besides the good speed work, it’s fun because you can hang out and socialize with your friends and the other runners when you are waiting for your lap.

AND- we had some Back on My Feet teams out at the race and everyone was having a great time-

Look at this happy group! Jimmy & James ran their first half marathon the following week at Carmel!

Phil, Lee, Me & Chrissy

Great Day for running- thank you Kim and Heather for putting on a great race!

I’ve mentioned I’ve been wanting to train for a triathlon and on Sunday got the idea in my head to train for Muncie 70.3 in July. (Yes, I will do shorter distances before then!) So, I’ve made him change my plan again. I’m excited about swimming and biking. Naturally I am a better runner, I enjoy running more and really, running is just easier. You don’t have to get wet, you don’t have to deal with a bike. You just put your shoes on and go. I’m ready for a different kind of goal though. I’m not 100% committed yet, but almost there.

I swam & biked on Monday and on Tuesday, I swam & ran. My legs are crazy tired and sore like I did a strength workout with squats and lunges and I’m not sure why- (because I didn’t do a strength workout!) it started before the swimming and biking though so it must be from the 12 mile stroller run on Saturday, although I’ve never been sore like this from a stroller run. It was one of my first longer, fastish runs since the marathon though, so maybe that’s it. I might take an unplanned rest day today. I’m certainly not doing my prescribed speedwork of mile repeats. The pace is set at 6:11-6:18 and I know I don’t have that in my legs today. On Saturday, I’m running Rock the Relay as a two man team. It will be 13.1 miles each, in sets of 2.2 miles at a time. It’s going to be a crazy good workout, so I’m OK with skipping today and putting my effort into Saturday. Marshall, Cadence and I will probably just do an easy recovery stroller run this afternoon.

Title of this blog is half marathons scare me. I haven’t even talked about it much. But I’ll just say, they do, that’s why I haven’t raced one in literally 4-5 years. They scare me, because you have to run so fast the whole time. I’ve gotten used to the whole 26.2 thing where you are running comfortably for a good bit of the race. Glenn tells me, I’m just scared of being uncomfortable. When I imagined myself running sub 3:15 for a full marathon, I thought it would be uncomfortable the whole time. It wasn’t at all. In fact, the first 10K, though it was ran with a tale wind, was 7:05ish pace and it felt very comfortable. I supposed 6:45ish for the first 10K of a half should feel the same? I hope so!

The picture below is right before the last half marathon I had “raced” it is my second fastest official half marathon time. (I think 1:39?) Since then I have crossed the half marathon mark of full marathons faster than the time I ran that day probably 6 or 7 times. I remember having a rough race, it was in Bloomington, which is really hilly and I had been running in flat Indy, of course. It was also during my training for Boston 2009, and as I struggled through the hilly 13.1, I wondered how I would get through my second full marathon. I actually remember crying at some point in this race because I felt so terrible. What a girl. This was before my blogging days. No race recaps to be found. I honestly can’t believe this was so long ago. It seems so far away, yet so recent.

Standing with Glenn and my Mom before the IU Half Marathon 2009

• Working hard again
• Being on a familiar course
• Volunteers at every mile yelling out splits
• The Back on My Feet water stops- always motivating to see people you know and they were everywhere! THANK YOU guys!
• The raspberry beer & fried shrimp at the finish

• Um… it was really humid. My black tank top was soaking wet. Should have worn dry-fit, but am still working on fitting back into my good dry-fit workout tops.
• The girl that kept passing me around miles 5-6. She would pass and then move right in front of me, and then proceed to slow down. We had the whole road to work with… made no sense to me. We finally parted way after 1.5 miles of that. 
• It was a little lonely as the race went on and everyone spread out.

Ericka and I post race

Post race snuggles with my little monkey.

I had the privilege of running with Eric Arnold, who is a member of team Progress House. During the training process I have had the opportunity to run with a good handful of the guys on the team- each one of them special to me. On race morning I had pretty much decided that I would be running with Eric for the race.

I honestly had the most fun in a race that I have ever had…. and I have ran a lot of races. For the first five miles, I was running back and forth between different team members while taking pictures and videos. After those first five- I decided to stop being the crazy girl with loud footsteps, a backpack and a camera sprinting back and forth between runners and stuck to running right with Eric the rest of the way.

We worked hard, we laughed, we met new friends and learned a little bit about what it means to be a real runner. You have to OWN the hills! (Right Eric?!) Other than the tiny incline the team used to think of as a mountain, we hadn’t been training on hills.  If you are familiar with Indianapolis at all, you know that there are no hills downtown! Well, there were quite a few long, gradual hills waiting for us up in Carmel. We all marched right up those hills like we were born to do it.

A couple of highlights from my race with Eric-
1. The sarcasm & humor through the whole race- even when it was painful
2. Running with Brian Donnelly for the first 7 miles
3. Seeing all of the BoMF supporters along the course working water stops and cheering us on
4. When I told him we were doing great and nobody was passing us- and as soon as I said that it seemed as though herds of runners came stomping past
5. The friend we met at mile 10
6. Finally catching up to John & Guy – and working together to finish a strong race
7. Sprinting it in on the last straight away
8. The hugs & tears at the finish line
9. Eric donating his hard earned medal to Medals for Mettles without thinking twice about it
10. Cheering on our teammates once we were done

Check out this amazing video that one of our Non-Res team members put together honoring team HVAF and their accomplishment in completing the race! 

One of my favorite pictures from the day!