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Sunday, October 16, 2011

My 1st Half-Marathon, 13.1 miles

I finished my 1st half-marathon!!! 1:57:XX (1:57:34 by my Garmin) Both goals accomplished: finish and finish under 2 hours. Felt incredibly awesome!! Well this place outta be getting familiar to me; my first race ever, a 10k in May, and now my first half-marathon and the farthest I've ever run in my life!  What a gorgeous place to run!



Saw a few familiar faces including 2 of the Calfire dispatchers I work with, Shana(?) and Jackie.  Was also Jackie's 1st half marathon (she smoked me) and Shana has been training for a possible Boston qualify.  Loved  knowing they were ahead of me, gave me something to try and track down.

Weather was cloudy, overcast, and cool.  Absolutely awesome running weather.  Again, this place is beautiful to run.

Pre-race training: Lets just say I was consistent.  I never made it to the max mileage I was supposed to be running on my long day, which was 10 miles.  I never made it past 8, but didn't try real hard to go past that either, oh well.  Even though I'd been doing most of my road running in my Brooks Green Silence, they are still my transition shoe and didn't want to risk this long run so went with my die-hard Brooks Cascadia, a trail shoe that runs just as good on the road, and is my go-to shoe for whatever the run. (and soon to be replaced with Brooks new Pure Grit, trail runners, but alas, I won't get em till a week after the race.)

Other Gear:  wore my Avenue of the Giants tech shirt from my first race, Brooks Sherpa running shorts, my awesome Brooks running hat (wicks sweat away incredibly!), shades, my Garmin Forerunner 410, my Fuel Belt with 2 bottles (1 water and the other sports drink) and the pouch full of Power Bar Gel Blasts. Didn't even finish one bottle and still had gels left.

Carbs: I actually decided to semi-follow a plan from Runner's World for carbing up days before a long race.  Daily eating 4g of carbs per pound of body weight.  This put me at 650g a day!  Holy crap was that hard!  Think my highest day I only got to 525, usually was in the high 475 range.  Really made me realize how little I eat normally 8\S  Having that energy in reserve really paid huge dividends I will be doing it again for future races.  I never hit an energy wall or felt weak, in fact haven't felt stronger in a long time!

Can't wait to run the next half or maybe my first full marathon! Actually tentatively planning on my first full marathon to be this race next year, run some half's till than.  Hoping to run into a running partner soon, this solo stuff blows.

WOOHOO I AM SO STOKED!!!

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