In a previous blog post, I mentioned that between my last two marathons, my training was totally insufficient. My longest run was 10 miles, and I went for pretty long stretches of time without running at all. As a result, compared to my first marathon, my performance wasn't super great. My recovery wasn't that stellar either, for that matter. Stairs were scary for a very long time....
I promised myself that I wouldn't do that leading up to the Richmond Marathon. I really meant it when I said it too. However, here I am about 10 weeks away from said marathon. I've done a lot of solid (mostly slow) mid-distance runs, but my longest run before this week was about 7.5 miles. And even that 7.5mi run was supposed to be a 10-mile run that I just wasn't able to tough out. I was starting to take a lot of comfort in the cushy 7-hour course limit to finish the Richmond Marathon this fall.
I noticed on that, on Strava there was a half marathon challenge for the month of September. I told my husband, and he said "DOOO IIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!"
So I made sure to carb up and hydrate the night before, and I set out to do my half marathon training run on Sunday afternoon. I was really surprised, the first 11.5 miles went really well! The weather was nice and cool, and I was able to run the whole thing while maintaining a relatively consistent pace. At mile 11.5, I sort of hit a wall. I felt really dehydrated and pretty depleted. I hadn't brought my water bottle or any gels, because I hadn't needed them for this distance in the past. Now I wanted them more than anything. I was listening to an audiobook on this run, and I swear the only thing they talked about from mile 11 until the end was water, flowing springs, gentle rivers, cool refreshing beverages, and swimming pools (stop taunting me!). I walked the next half a mile, and then managed to finish out by running the last 1.2 miles of the run. I earned my strava badge, but I've still got a long way to go (read:run) before The race in November.
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