Race Week

This week began my official taper week for the half marathon. It started out on Sunday by doing an easy 11 miles with Erin and Ellie on the trail in Star City heading north towards Point Marion. It was a nice day and the trees were beautiful. Unfortunately, I felt horrible the entire way and could not wait to finish. This is not the way I prefer to feel the week before the race that I have been training for the last four months. I decided to take the following two days off (Monday and Tuesday) and get rested up as well as try to take in some more calories to refuel. I came back on Wednesday for an easy 6 miles and felt awesome. It took everything I had to hold myself back and not push the pace too hard. I then ran 4 on Thursday and 2 miles today. It felt like I had just left for my run when I was already getting back home. I will be taking tomorrow off before the race. Hopefully all of this will work and I will feel refreshed and ready to go on Sunday.

My goal for the race is to finish around 1:22. I think that I can probably run around a 1:20 but after my horrible half marathon in the spring I have decided to take a more conservative approach. I am planning on going out somewhere between 6:15 and 6:20 pace. This will probably be the most difficult part for me because I am horrible at pacing myself in the first few miles of longer races. After that I have no real major race plans. If I feel good and think I can go, I will try to slowly pick up the pace throughout the rest of the race. If not I can hold steady and still finish around my goal time. I will see how I feel on race day.

Here is the list of my major concerns right now (in no particular order):

1. What racing flats to wear: Adidas Adios or Nike LunaRacer? I am going to take both with me and decided in the morning.
2. Weather: The weather report for Sunday has changed just about every day that I check. Right now it is saying partly cloudy with a high of 50 and a low of 37. Arm warmers or no arm warmers? Gloves or no gloves? What shorts to wear? Again, I will probably bring everything with me and decided in the morning.
3. Dinner the night before: What will sit well with me and leave me fueled for the morning? This can be difficult in a strange city.
4. Wait time: The location of the start line is difficult to get to once they have closed the streets. They are recommending being at the line and hour before the race. This is a long time for me. What am I going to do? What if it is cold?
5. Am I going to have another bad race? I hope not!

Yes, I know I am crazy. This is nothing out of the ordinary for me. I get like this before almost all of my races. I think that Erin is probably about ready to kill me right now because I go over this list with her just about every second of the day. I also try on both pairs of shoes every night in my attempt to decide what to wear, and I am still undecided. Anyway, good luck to everyone else out there that is running this weekend. I will try to have a full recap after the race.

10 Days and Counting

Well, we are down to the final 10 days until the big half marathon. It has been a tough week of training but these will be the last few hard workouts I put in until after my little time off after the race. Erin and I started out the weekend with 6:30 AM trip to Wheeling on Saturday to run the Auggie’s 5k. The race went well and I was able to finish 1st in a time of 17:09. I felt very strong throughout which gave me a huge boost in confidence for my half marathon goals (even though I really wanted to get under 17:00 minutes again). It was a fun time overall. Erin finished 2nd overall for the women (running another PR) and we got to get in some good advertising for the shop. I also got to see my old coach (finishing 5th overall in a time of 18:27 at an age of 51!) and catch up on running store stuff. If you are ever over near wheeling be sure to stop in his shop, The Runners Connection, in Bellaire, OH and check it out. After everything finished up there we headed back to Motown and finished up the day working at the shop.

The next day was my long run day. I headed out the door by myself (Ellie wanted to run with just Mommy) without a real course in mind. I thought I would just explore the Morgantown neighbor hoods. My legs were really stiff from the race the day before but I started to loosen up a bit after about mile 5. The run ended up being a little hillier than I would have liked but I was able to get in a good 16 miles the day after a hard effort race; so I was happy. After Erin and I grad some lunch we headed out to the pumpkin patch for some Ellie fun. She had a blast even though the place was an entire muddy mess from the previous week’s worth of rain. A good time was had by all!

I had my final workout yesterday, 6 Arboretum hill repeats followed by 15 minutes of 60/30’s. It is a good strength workout followed by speed to get the legs turning over again after the slow uphills. I am feeling it today to say the least. I am really looking forward to my taper week next week. My body is getting worn down and having trouble dragging myself out bed for runs in the morning.

I will try to give an update next week before the race and then hopefully a full recap after. Have a great week!

Kevin

Nervous

I have been a little worried here lately because I was just not getting excited about the upcoming half-marathon Erin and I are doing. Well, that has all changed in the last few days! I am getting really nervous about the race and it is all that I think about most of the time. I just keep running through the race in my head over and over again.

I was hoping to get an idea of what kind of shape I was in at the 10k I did last weekend. Erin had decided to do the 5k instead and left me to push Ellie in the 10k; not the most ideal racing conditions. Erin finished first in the women's 5k race and I finished 3rd in the 10k. I ended up running 39 min. and some change but that was after stopping to buckle Ellie back in the stroller at one point and stopping two other times to pick up her Dora the Explorer book off of the ground. There was also a nasty head wind on the way back and anyone who runs with a jogging stroller knows how hard it is to push those things into the wind. They essentially act like a big parachute. So in the end, I still really had know idea what kind of shape I was in.

This past Saturday on an 8 mile run I decided to time some of my mile splits. I usually don't time my self and just go for mileage and base my effort on how I feel that day. It was a normal day so I felt my splits would accurately represent what my normal training pace was. I hit the split between mile 3 and 4 in 6:45 and then between mile 5 and 6 in 6:42. I defiantly tried not to pick up the pace because I knew I was timing myself so I felt those accurately represented my normal run days. I was happy with those times considering that I had just done 10 hill repeats up the Arboretum main trail just a couple days before. I was so happy in fact that I decided to tempo the last two miles home which I really regretted the next day when I had to do my long run of 16 miles!

I know this is a boring post to most people but it is just an update of my training for the Spirit of Pittsburgh Half Marathon. I think I am probably going to do the Auggie's 5k this weekend to see what I can run a 5k in right now. I will give an update as to how that goes.

Enjoy this beautiful fall season!

Kevin