It’s Medal Monday! And since I got a shiny new medal yesterday, I thought today would be the perfect day to do my very first Medal Monday post!

Race

NJ Half Marathon 2018

Location

Long Branch, NJ

Official Finish Time

2:31:14 @ 11:33 min/mile pace

Pre-race mindset

Half Marathon #5 was about something much bigger than setting a new PR. It was about making fitness a priority this year and making time for something I love, even if the to do list is a mile long.

At the start of 2018, I was in the worst shape of my life and I made a commitment to myself to get back in shape by improving my eating habits, strength training, and running. It’s hard to believe that was four months ago! In this short time, I’ve lost 25 lbs., completed 12 weeks of Kayla Itsines BBG Stronger program, and trained for a half marathon. I am in such a different place than I was on January 1st and I’m thrilled with my progress!

Now, I do have to mention that I strained my quad on my 10 mile training run four weeks ago. The pain would go away while I was running so I kept running the week after but when it came time for my 11 mile run the following week, I was in a lot of pain after so I decided to rest it for a few days. The following week, I ran 2 miles to test it out and I was in pain again after the run so I took the rest of the week off. So basically, I didn’t do any real running between April 7th and April 24th! That was over two weeks off right before the race, which meant I ended up skipping two long runs and a bunch of shorter runs.

Needless to say, I went into this race feeling a little unsure about being able to run it well. My plan was to first and foremost, enjoy the race. But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t care at all about my times. I knew that the real win for this race was having set time aside to train for it, but the next win would be to run it in about 2.5 hours and run it with a negative split (when you run the second half faster than the first).

Race Day Recap

If you follow me on Instagram and saw my stories, you know that on race day morning it was raining and in the low 50’s when I got into my car at 5:30am. The forecast showed the rain stopping between 7am and 8am so I wasn’t too concerned with the rain. I wore a couple of long-sleeved layers over my singlet knowing that I’d shed them on the course as they got wet. In the end, it was barely drizzling when I was in the corrals and by Mile 3, I had warmed up and shed both long-sleeved layers. For those of you who aren’t runners, it’s common for runners to leave their layers on the side of the course. Volunteers will do a sweep of the course at the end and donate all the abandoned clothing to local charities.

Since my plan was to run a faster second half, I started out nice and slowly. I had used this negative splits calculator to figure out my goal pace. When I entered a goal of exactly 2:30, though, the calculator showed that I’d need to run the first six miles at an 11:40 pace. Based on my training runs and on the fact that I had strained my quad, I figured I should run slower than that so I changed it to a 2:33 projected finish, which brought the pace for the first 6 miles to 11:54. This seemed much more manageable to me, and since I’d be conserving energy, I was feeling confident I could do the rest at around an 11:26 pace.

Once I started running, I found it really hard to stay at 11:54 consistently but I was pretty darn close:

Mile 1: 11:57

Mile 2: 11:51

Mile 3: 12:04 (I attribute the extra seconds to shedding layers and having to get my fuel belt back in place)

Mile 4: 11:51

Mile 5: 11:45

Mile 6: 11:53

By Mile 3 I really had to pee. I kept an eye out for porta potties from Miles 3-5 but the ones I passed had too long of a line for me to want to stop. I didn’t want to lose too much time on a potty stop! Luckily, somewhere during Mile 7 I found my opportunity. There were 4 porta potties lined up in a row and the line only had 4 people. I knew my turn would come up quickly, so I went for it. I ended up losing only about a minute of time, running Mile 7 at 12:43.

After the stop at the porta potty, I wanted to make up for lost time and it was the right time for me to start aiming for 11:26 miles the rest of the race, so once I started running again, I sped up and ended up running Mile 8 at 10:51. It was faster than planned, but I was feeling great. I had just had a Gu at Mile 6 and had cranked up the volume on the music, so I think that gave me the energy I needed to increase my pace. At that point, I decided that instead of aiming for an 11:26 pace, I’d try to stay at 11:00 min/mile pace for as long as I could and ended up running the following for that stretch:

Mile 9: 11:00

Mile 10: 10:54

Mile 11: 10:51

I was thrilled with these times and once I knew I only had two miles left and was still feeling great, I decided to speed it up and finish as strong as I possibly could. I ended up running the last two even faster:

Mile 12: 10:39

Mile 13: 10:36

Once I saw the finish line, I sprinted as fast as I could with my tired legs during the last tenth of a mile and sped up to 9:48 min/mile.

See below for a comparison of what I planned to run (on the left) and what I ended up running (on the right):

Even though Mile 7 ended up being the slowest, I love that mile. It’s the mile that forced me to speed up after and it allowed me to realize that a negative split was definitely possible for me.

Post-Race Thoughts

In the end, I came in at an official time of 2:31:14, which I am so proud of! Who cares if it was 29 minutes slower than my PR? I had fun, felt wonderful, and left the race feeling more inspired than ever. What more could I ask for?

What’s Next

I’m signed up for the Run the Hook 10K on May 13th. Having lost my mom years ago, Mother’s Day is always a hard day for me so I’m happy that I have a race to look forward to on that day. Plus I’m running it with two friends so that’ll make it even more fun. =)

On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote:

“That’s the thing about running: your greatest runs are rarely measured by racing success. They are moments in time when running allows you to see how wonderful your life is.”

– Kara Goucher