UNICEf Half

Well what can I say.... I'm DONE and SO glad it's over. Not the same attitude I had last year after completing my 1st 10K. There has been a lot going on for us over the past few months... a few quite stressful things that I attempted to just put behind me and trust that God was in control but it was clear to me this morning how heavily these things had been weighing on me... including this race.

I was neither excited, nor nervous... all I could find myself saying was 'let's get this over with' and '1 thing to cross off the list.' NOT a good mental state to begin a 13.1 mile run. I jumped into the middle of the pack and when the countdown finished... I let others pass me as I picked a slow pace to begin with. One of my biggest struggles is starting too fast and then after just a few miles I'm done. So I had my Nike+ with me to keep track of my pace. This was so supposed to be a flat and fast race and in comparison to the Standard Charter... it is... but it did have some slopes that caught me off guard and I began to panic about how many hills there were going to be due to my lack of training in that area. However, I was actually quite surprised in how I handled them and found them easier to run than other areas of the course.

I was doing well... (despite my mental weakness already) until I hit 11K and looked down at my iPod to check time and turn it on for awhile. And that's when I lost it and literally almost broke down in tears. I have used my Nike+ to train... it tells me the distance that I've run and the pace I'm going. I calibrated it against my treadmill and thought it was right. However, at 11K (approx 6.8miles) my Nike+ said 8. At first I was stoked.. I though wow.. I'm doing much better than I thought (I was thinking the 8 was Kilometers) and then I realized it was miles... 8 miles. A bit off? So all my hard work in timing things, pacing things... was wrong so at the point I knew I wasn't going to make my 2hr goal and I was just discouraged and disappointed.

It was at that point too that the sun starting beaming pretty good making it much warmer out than anticipated and well... my body just doesn't do well in the sun. I'm not trying to make excuses for my poor training but the sun really took a lot out of me... I just haven't trained under the sun and I paid for it. I seriously just wanted to cry and quit because I knew my goal had just gone out the window and I just wanted to get it over with. I tried a gel pack but it just made me sick to my stomach. I don't remember much until 15K and then I was just happy to be on the down stretch. At 19K, I felt my toenail going... and it became harder to push myself. When I saw the sign for 20K... I just started to book it... I just so wanted to be done. I finished at about 2:20:28. Ugh... what's even worse was that I looked at my Nike+ again and at this point it was 2.5 miles off! That's crazy!!!! So while my time wasn't even close to what I wanted... I feel somewhat okay as based on the terrible calibration of my Nike+ system... I've never run 13.1 miles before! Based on what it said... my longest run was probably about 10.5 miles and my average runs about 6/8 miles. Not good in preparing for a half.

So I learned many lessons today....
1. Don't depend on my Nike+
2. Don't use gel packs
3. Don't drink sports drink along the way... just water for this girl
5. Bring a hat
6. Train in the heat
7. Train on hills more often
8. and most importantly....Don't carry burdens... lay them at the feet of God.

I'm proud that I could finish sprinting as usually the last thing i want to do after a long run is to sprint and I'm proud that I had the energy to do that but aside from that... I'm just glad it's over. Now... on to the Standard Chartered half. I'm beginning to think I'm crazy for wanting to do this but once the heat comes back around I don't think I'll be doing any racing so this may be my last chance for awhile and plus Mike's running the full so it will be fun to share this race with him.