Renae finishing her 1/2 marathon
Me a little over half way through the half.
Renae and Bethany before the start of the races. Bethany ran the 5K.
Well last weekend which seems so incrediblly long ago Renae and I ran the 1st Annual Gold's Gym Half Marathon. I had been running in the gym for the most part since it got really hot in June so this aside from the Durango half was my first run outside. I am attempting a new tactic which I had hoped would make me faster. That is running 9 min and walking a minute. But since I hadn't ran outside for a while I had a hard time pacing myself. So my first mile was like an 11 min mile and my second mile was like 10.39. So needless to say I wore myself out pretty fast because I was planning for between 12-13 min miles. So by the time I was 3 miles in I was really out of whack and was walking more. I couldn't find any sort of rythem so I'd walk really fast when I was walking and run hard when I was running. After passing the second aid station I was able to run longer stretches. Till I hit the hills. I was at mile 5 before I met the person in first place which meant that they were only 2.5 miles ahead of me. The nice thing about hills is eventually they go down. The turn around point was connected lakes in the Redlands and it was a downhill trail to the turn around. I was flat out flying down the hill with these big bounding strides which helped me make up some time. I kinda skipped/hopped back up the trail on the return and then ran down the hills that I had walked up. By the time I hit mile 8.5 I had a delusion in my head that I could if I pushed myself come in under 3 hours. This pushed out of my head a mile later with my feet hurting ( don't know what the foot issue is but one would think that my feet would be toughened up by now). So now I started this walk 2min run 3 min strategy which got me to mile 11 by 2 hours and 40 mins in. Then I started thinking I could do this I can do this and started pushing myself a little harder. But on the way back they rerouted the course to add some distance and it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I let the pain in my feet control me. The last 3/4 mile was pure agonizing pain but I made it and Bethany was there at the last turn and ran with me to the finish line. I averaged a 14.47 mile but I know I can do much better. I decided I will start running outside at least twice a week to get my groove back. I waited for Renae and she came in about 20 min after I did (maybe not that long). I ran with her to the finish. This was the first run that I got salt (sweat) in places that hurt so bad it stung and I couldn't sit down. That was mucho mucho painful, when I got home immediately took a shower and then another one. By the end of the day I had 3 showers all with attempts to remove salt. Later that afternoon we had an hour long massage that was a gift from Taysha for doing so much for the wedding.
Kristen and Kaily came into town later that day, and unbeknownst to us, carried the death bug from hell. I got sick Monday morning with it hitting out of the blue like a ton of bricks. Because Kristen, Kaily, Roby, RJ, and Cheryl were all staying at the house Monday night I got a hotel room so I could be sick with no interuptions, lol. Cheryl brought by some soup because I was weak and hadn't had anything to eat all day. I was able to drink the broth but that was about it. Around 7pm there was a knock at the door and it was Renae who was now also sick. Needless to say everyone got sick including Katie and Kaleb who was only exposed for a couple of hours.
Even though that first day I wasn't able to eat hardly anything the second and third day of sickness I just wanted comfort food and ate like I hadn't eaten in weeks. This kinda put a kabosh on my weight loss. Luckily it only affected me for a lb. But I wasn't able to work out either until Thursday and I was able to do one round of circuit training.
Renae was really industrious on Friday night and cooked like three different meals for the week, so there shouldn't be any need to eat out this week which is sweet.
Today I made it to the gym even though I had hoped to run outside. Pretty much ran a warm-up to get ready to get back into the groove of things ran 2.5 miles and then did a little bit of circuit training. Will also get the dogs out to the desert for a walk, so figure that is pretty good.
I'm really hoping to do the Air Force Marathon in the time between 2:30 and 2:45. There were only 34 people who ran this last 1/2 so as far as being motivated by the event it didn't happen. However there are 5-7,000 people running the half for the Air Force, coolio.
