My tune-up half marathon: Goodness gracious so much goodness

During this training cycle, my normal weekend routine involves getting up and running an insane distance in the cold, trying to ensure I don't lose fingers to frostbite and not letting large dog pull me into a ditch for the miles he's with me.  But this weekend has been different--instead, I went and ran an insane distance in the cold about an hour south of my house.  I went and ran a half marathon.

So much green.  SO MUCH.

FYI--I don't normally get a medal for running
loops around my own house.

The purpose of this half marathon was, for once, not to get a medal.  It was my official training plan tune-up race, at which the plan was to run my marathon pace (9:25-ish) the entire time just to see how comfy it was so I could make any adjustments as needed between now and the end of May.  How well did that go?  Well, see for yourself:

Just in case you couldn't tell, NONE of those
paces are 9:25.  NONE.

I'm a tune-up race moron.  And you know what's even crazier about those paces? The fact that I ran 4 miles before the race started and then about 1.5 more after the race because there was an 18-19 mile run on the training schedule this weekend.

So the pace was way too fast (bad), but there were a lot of positives (goods) that came out of this race.  Let's arrange them in a nice bulleted list because we're all down with bulleted lists (especially when they are not a part of a death-by-powerpoint):

• Good #1:  I actually did the extra mileage I was supposed to do.  Normally I have every intention of running the extra miles on the plan when I have a race scheduled, but it doesn't usually happen.  This time it did because I'm still in the RUN ALL THE RUNS mode.  A PR never comes to most runners when they don't do the runs on the training plan.
• Good #2: My ankle didn't bother me at all. I've been worried about my right ankle and its corresponding shin splint that had plagued me for weeks, but it didn't rear it's ugly head at all for any of the miles I ran today.
• Good #3: I managed to run with the 2:05 pacers for at least half of the race before blasting off to the finish.  Now, these pacers kept running in the 9:20s...but last I checked that's not the pace one runs to wheeze across the finish line in two hours and five minutes.  Too-fast pacers aside, I hung with them  for the first half of the race and then they disappeared at a water station right before the start of mile 7.  I do attribute some of my strong back half of the race to the fact that they slowed me down during the first half. (The other half I attribute to the cold wind that I wanted to get out of ASAP because I like my fingers attached to my hand.)
• Good #4: This gave me a good sense of how tired I'm going to feel at mile 17 when I'm doing my marathon thing.  This course was much flatter than the hills around my house, which pounded my legs a little more than they normally get pounded.  This made my glutes and hammies pretty sore and tired by mile 9 (my mile 13 when you add in my 4 before the race), but I kept pushing because, again, you don't get a PR by wimping out.  I may have to add in some light leg work to my strength days to counteract this type of fatigue, seeing as my goal marathon is of similar flatness to this half.
• Good #5: I realized I can totally go into overdrive at the end of a race and not die.  In the last 0.2 the race curved into a parking lot so you could see the people ahead of you--and that's when I saw the 2 hour pacers.  Now, I never thought I would ever catch up to them, but I started gunning it with everything I had left for that last 0.2 in case they were running too fast like the 2:05 pacers--and they were, hence my official sub-2 finish.  So what if I hobbled through that 1.5 mile cool down.  That last-minute burst was worth it, baby.

• Good #6: SHAMROCK SHOES PEOPLE.  And I only saw, like, two other people who had colorful running tights on in a sea of black.  How not fun.

And now, it's a good thing that it's time for learnings because that means the post is nearly over:

• I'm feeling pretty good about my performance in this race - that sub-2 really surprised me.  Especially since the 2 hour pacers crossed the line ahead of me.
• I'm also feeling pretty good about those awesome shamrock shoes.  Mmmm.
• Feeling good about nearly killing myself in the last 0.2, even though now walking is still difficult.
• Large dog is not feeling good about the fact that I had to leave him behind.  In fact, he is wholly unimpressed by all of my racing nonsense.

Tomorrow's workout: Some cross-training until my legs work again.