Where the Hell Have I Been?

This is going to come way out of the blue, but I’ve been training.  HARD.  I never stopped running after my 10K win in November because our season of great weather just kept going and going, so the break season was super short compared to most Iowa winters.  I kept up an average of 17-22 miles of running each week through the winter and then kicked into half marathon training 6 weeks ago.  During those 6 weeks, I did kickboxing here at home and classes at the gym, so I’ve been building up endurance big-time.

The training went well, but I wasn’t feeling on-pace with last year.  However, my long runs proved that my gut feelings were wrong and I ended up running a half this morning at a pretty good clip, beating last year’s race pace by 24-25 seconds per mile (all calculators put me at a 9:05 pace this year, but the official results, with a second faster time than my GPS watch and app, put me at a 9:06 pace).  I also did a negative split without even having to verify it, the second half paces were that much faster than the first half.

I’m pretty happy!  To start the year 0:25 faster per mile at a half marathon distance is pretty encouraging.  Last year’s race stats were:

• 489/864 Overall (56.6%)
• 186/422 Women (44%)
• 30/59 Division (50.8%)
• Finish Time 2:02:43 = 9:30 Avg Pace

This year’s race stats are:

• 429/857 Overall (50.06%)
• 128/381 Women (33.6%)
• 18/46 Division (39.13%)
• Finish Time 1:59:09 = 9:05 Avg Pace

So… a big improvement!

Onto the relay in two weeks!