Tip of the Week

Tip of the Week:





Remember to take rest days!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Silver Strand Half

The last few weeks of my training for this race were.. sporadic, at best.  I was planning my daughter's birthday party (which was the day before the race) and things were extremely hectic at work (budget time!).  I did get up to 13 miles but my pace was off.  Anyhow, earlier in the week they forecasted rain for the weekend and all I could think was, "Oh no! Shannon's first race!"  As I mentioned before, my friend Shannon is flying in from Chicago to run her first half marathon here in San Diego.  I really wanted her to have a great experience.  Thankfully, they only forecasted rain for Saturday and not for Sunday - woo hoo!!

So after my daughter's birthday party, I picked up Shannon from the airport and we headed to our pre-race meal at Puerto La Boca in Little Italy.  Yummy!  Then we went home to do some race prep.

The next morning we were up at 430am and started to get ready.  My co-worker Joseph carpooled with us.   We arrived at the start line and it was turning out to be a beautiful day already.  The sun was shining and the weather felt chilly - great running weather!


Shannon had said that her goal was 2:15 so we started in that wave.  I knew from my training that I was going to be hard-pressed to reach my goal (sub-2 hr) but I would be close.  However, after catching up with Shannon at dinner, I just wanted to run with her and help her get to her goal.  I rarely ever get to run with friends (especially the ones from my hometown Chicago) so I wanted to savor this opportunity.  Ha!

The race started and it was a clear sunny day!  You couldn't have asked for better weather!  So good in fact that we made a rookie mistake and ran a little too fast for the first 3 miles (like 8:40 mile, yikes!) knowing that was waaay too fast, we decided to slow it down for the next few miles.  I was afraid we had already done damage but it worked out.  It was a great flat race (which is hard to come by in San Diego) and had some nice scenic parts.  Shannon did awesome!!  We only had to walk twice and only for 30 seconds. We finished in 2:07!!  So proud of her!  She dug deep at the end and finished strong!

I think she had a good experience - she's talking about doing the half marathon in Vegas next year!  Got another one addicted... Yeah!

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