2013 Running Wrap Up

I swear I'll get to the second part of what lead me to start running at some point, but I figure everything will make so much more sense if I just skip ahead to my immediate past with running.

Let's start with 2013 - I had it in my head that I would run the same race I had run last year, the Amica Seattle Half Marathon, except this would be the year I would run the full. It's always been on my bucket list, so I figured, why not? Besides, the race was in December, so there was plenty of time to train. I spent several hours researching marathon training plans and holding off registering until I was good and ready to commit.

January was met with little running. I had just recovered from getting my tonsils taken out and hadn't taken one running step for two and a half weeks since the procedure. That month I ran 30 miles total, at a 10'12'' average pace. Pretty slow!

February was much better, running 52 miles total at an average 10'03'' pace. I was also doing Bikram for the first time, so running and sweating (even more than I already was) really weren't on my list of priorities. I technically had a 5K coming up in March, but I wasn't really worried about it.

March began with the Hot Chocolate 5K, which I ran in 25:40. It was really hard, because I hadn't necessarily been training for it, and I felt like I didn't do that well.

JW and I after the Hot Chocolate 5K holding (you guessed it) hot chocolate

The rest of March was fine, I ended up running 64 miles with an average pace of 10'02''. One second faster than February - still an improvement! I continued practicing Bikram. I was really frustrated with how slow I was going, but, it being my first winter in Seattle, I figured I was faring pretty well. I was ready for spring!

In April I took it up a notch. 89 miles total at an average pace of 09'53'' - I finally broke down into the nines! I was feeling really motivated because I had just been cast as the lead in Singin' in the Rain and wanted to make sure I was in good shape when we started in May. Plus the weather was improving every day! I was tentatively training for a half marathon that would take place in July.

In May, I was in full blown half marathon training. I ran 118 miles at an average pace of 09'46''. Woohoo! But, after I temporarily moved back to Texas for rehearsals, my training abruptly stopped. I realized I had to drop the idea of doing a half marathon in mid-July because the Texas heat was getting way too intense for me to run in.

A typical Texas summer.

Then, for some reason, on the morning of June 3rd, after being in intense rehearsals for 2 weeks, I entered the 2013 Nike Women's Marathon SF Random Draw on a complete whim. I mean, I wasn't even running -  I had tried to run in the Texas heat but failed miserably after a couple of feeble tries and my toenail falling off.

After perusing running blogs and getting inspired just thinking about running a marathon (but at the same time thinking I could never get chosen) I ran a 10K an hour later and it felt AWESOME.

For the whole month of June between that wonderful 10K and the end of the month, I ran a whopping 19 miles total. Which is less than the entire month of January, after I had had surgery. ! SO imagine my surprise when I see this in my inbox on the morning of June 28:

to be frank, my reaction was, "...Oh, shit."

I started to panic. Could I really do this? Sure, "official" training with the Nike plus app wouldn't start until the 8th, but I had only run 19 miles in the last month. How would I go about building my base and not push too hard? Would I survive that daunting 20 mile run when the longest I've run is only 13.1 miles??

I decided I had to just take it one day at a time. Thus, the creation of this blog.

Do you have a marathon coming up?  Have you ever had to drop a planned race because something else came up? Any Texas runners out there?