The Half Marathon I Didn't Train For

I've talked a little bit on here about how running has been going since the Bellingham Bay Half Marathon, but here's a more detailed summary:

Somewhat consistent. However, if I had planned on training for the Amica Seattle Half Marathon on November 30, my training should have looked something like this:

The blue is what I actually did, the orange is what I should have done. Along with interval, speed, and tempo workouts. Granted, the first week is a little skewed because the Bellingham Half Marathon was on 9/28, so that mileage (13.1) is included in the first week's count.

If I took that out...

The fact that some of my weekly totals were the same distance (a little less if you count that .1!) as the half marathon is really telling.

So, why did I sign up for the Amica Seattle Half Marathon the day before the race? To put it simply, because it was going to be a beautiful sunny day, my sister-in-law was running it, and I had participated the two previous years. Plus I was kind of curious as to how I would do, going into a race under-trained.

Trying to ignore the fact that it was 25 degrees, and my dismal training, here are the results!

My first half marathon in 2011 was my slowest at 2:14:04, so with almost no training whatsoever, I'd say 02:10:17 isn't too shabby!

My sister-in-law, herself- she's the whole reason I ran this! She's the one who ran her first half marathon in October and loved it so much that she immediately signed up for the Seattle Half. We took the above picture about 10 minutes before we started.

The beginning of the race was much better than the second half, for me - Rachel and I knew that we were going to split up, so I went ahead pretty early because I was feeling good. It was going to be a beautiful day, but it was still really cold - under 30 degrees.

At least the view was awesome.

There was still ice in the grass.

But there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

I started feeling pain probably around Mile 9- my hips were really killing me, and my feet started to cramp. Rachel and I talked about it later and realized that was the benefit of training - our feet and our joints would have been trained, as well as our cardiovascular system. I had just never thought about it that way!

29 degrees, 9'36'' pace. Not to bad, but not awesome either. Oh well.. now I really understand the benefit of training.