My second half marathon now in the books! I ran the US Half in San Francisco this past Sunday... what a gorgeous race. Weather could not have been more perfect, and the route is spectacular (albeit hilly... 1300 feet of total elevation!) The great news: I went from 2:30 on a flat course at Surf City in February to 2:10 on a very hilly course in April. Score!
Of course it's not a totally fair comparison... I half-ass trained for the first one and was out sick & traveling for a month. I also had a lot of hip flexor pain that forced me to stop and massage it out every.single.mile. at Surf City. But thanks to consistent training, hill work and an A.R.T. magician, I was actually able to run this one relatively pain free (although knees and feet started getting pretty cranky by mile 11).
Plus, I'm pretty sure I would have been slower had it not been for an overconfident coach who said, "there's no reason you can't run a 9 min/mile based on your 5k times." To which I laughed heartily as I'd figured a 10:10+ pace based on the hills and my training runs... but that thought nagged at me during the race. Hmm... ok. What's the worst that can happen? So I blow up and walk the last couple miles... better to know now than at Honu. So I pushed a bit harder, and I'm pretty darn happy with my 9:57 pace. Still have 2 more months to train and would love to shave off another 10 minutes. I think I can!
Great job! It's funny how she gets in your head on race day, isn't it? :-)
Posted by: Molly | 04/11/2012 at 09:24 PM
Nice job on the half!
Posted by: Kristi-randomthoughts.blogspot.com | 04/12/2012 at 10:00 AM
Brilliant race Jennifer. I have no doubt you can take at least 10mins off this in the next few months!
Posted by: David Yelland | 05/09/2012 at 04:17 AM