Monday, March 11, 2019

Day 168

I had a good Monday, but since I don't have much out of the ordinary to post about today, I'm going to take this chance to post about the other thing I did this weekend, which was to run two half marathon races in one weekend! I've run marathons--more marathon races than half marathon races, actually--and ultras, and I have done back-to-back long runs, but I until this weekend, I had never done two separate and official half marathons in one weekend. That all changed this weekend, and it was such fun.

Richard is always great race support!
A few weeks ago, I stated that I was on a mission to break the 2:30 mark in a half marathon and was following a plan from Runner's World. I ended up deviating from the plan a little bit, but apparently, I did something well enough to make my goal on a humid Louisiana Saturday. I've had my eye on running a 5:30 marathon for a while but had not thought much about running a faster half marathon until recently. Mentally, there is something that seems more doable to me about running 26.2 miles at a 12:35 pace than 13.1 miles at an 11:27 pace, but I'm becoming more comfortable with running miles at a pace that starts with "11" than I used to be. With practice, I should land that 5:30 marathon finish soon enough, and then it'll be time for some new goals!

The sub-3 hour Sunday race crew!
On Sunday, my friend Sandra and I drove to Lafayette to run the Zydeco Half Marathon. (We'd planned to have our other partner in crime, Elena, with us, but Mother Nature can be cruel, and the sinus crud landed at her house this weekend.) I have participated in a Zydeco race a total of five times now (ran the marathon in 2018 and the half marathon in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019), and it's always a good time. Like Saturday in Baton Rouge, Lafayette was humid, only it felt even more like swimming than Baton Rouge had the day before. I didn't have any major time goals for Zydeco, especially after running a new personal record (PR) time on Saturday, but I figured I'd enjoy the course and run somewhere between 2:45 and 3:00, which is exactly what we did. (My finish time was 2:58:10.) Sandra and I hung out with Schemer at the start for a few minutes, but he was pacing the 2:20 half marathon, so I knew I had limited time with him. While waiting in the start corral, I found Brianna, one of my former students, who was running her first half marathon. We'd commented on Facebook about hoping to see each other at the race, and we ended up seeing her for nearly three hours because we ran/walked the race together! Brianna and I used to do 2- and 3-mile run/walks on campus when she was a student at LSMSA and I was training for my first marathon, so it was really neat to share this experience with her. Also, she crushed it and didn't whine at all even when she was tired and in pain. We picked up another runner, Ann, around mile 7. Ann was doing her second half marathon, and we helped her cross the finish line with a PR of over 47 minutes. Somewhere around mile 8, we saw my friend Russell Poe, who was cruising toward a 13 minute PR and looking strong. We shared a sweaty hug in the street before he took off to burn up the last 16 or so miles of his race.


Perhaps my favorite part of this new running achievement was getting to do two of my favorite running things in one weekend: proving to myself that I'm getting faster/stronger and helping other runners. (A close third is leveling up to Jupiter for Half Fanatics!) With racing, working on projects for school, and doing Deltasig things, my weekend was pretty packed, but Richard and I ended the weekend with a family date to The Bulldog and a walk with our best dog. I can't believe how much better I feel today than I did a week ago, and I'm hoping to keep that up as long as possible. This upcoming weekend will be the last one for a few weeks where I don't have some sort of race and/or travel planned, so I intend to take it pretty easy this weekend and get ahead on school work where I can. Fingers crossed that I stick to the plan!

Something that made today great: I'm making steady progress on my literature review and my group projects. There's still plenty to be done, but I feel like I have everything under control.
Time I woke up: 8:25 am

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