The US Half Marathon on November 4th, 2012 was my 2nd half marathon and boy was it a tough one. The course had a few hills, but that wasn’t why this was a tough race for me. My training for this half marathon wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. I had a Vegas trip that made me miss a week of running and I also bought some new basketball shoes that literally tore up my feet, so that took me out for another 2 weeks. I also think that the running program that I was on was a little too aggressive for me. It had a “pace run” once a week and I think that I may have set too ambitious of a goal for only my 2nd half marathon. My goal for this race was 1:45, which is an 8:00 minute mile pace and about 10 minutes quicker than my first half. The reason why I didn’t like this program and the pace runs was because it took out the fun and the freedom from my running. I started thinking about my finish time a little too much and stopped focusing on my love for running. There were a few times during the training that I knew I was over-training, but I decided to push through it thinking that that was the only way that I was going to improve. Over-training: the one thing I caution my own clients about every week, yet it was something I was doing during this training. The good thing is that I learned from this experience. Not that I have strayed too far away from it, but I want to get back to the point I was at when I first read “Born to Run.” I want to love running like I did when I first started running.

As for the race, I finished at 2:14:52. There were a couple of times I walked, I tied my shoes a few times, and use the potty once. It wasn’t my cleanest race and I blame it on my lack of proper training leading up to it. But like I said, I learned from this experience and I’m excited to run my next half.

I just started training for my 3rd Half Marathon and this time my only goal is to run. Cheers!

Mile 10