Sunday, February 2, 2014

Race 3 : February 2014

Sugar & Spice Half Marathon

February 16, 2014
Clear Lake, TX
4.5 hour course limit


Why This Race?
You may have noticed that I absolutely love women's races.  So with one so close by, I had to choose it for February.  This year not only will there be medals and tech shirts, but wine glasses!  Christian has a collection of pint glasses from races and I am all too excited to add my girly wine glass to the cabinet.  There's also supposed to be a special twist at the finish line and I'm a sucker for surprises.  This will be my last all-women's half until I come full circle at RunGirl again.

Unlike the Cocoa Women's Half, which I thought was flat and turned out to be very much not flat, this course has something like 40 feet of elevation gain.  FLAT!  I'm learning to check things like that before I choose races, but I may have a few more hilly courses coming my way from a registering frenzy I had before I learned this lesson.

Goals
I was going to set myself some crazy goal like a PR because the course is nice and flat, but now my goal is just to finish.  I missed my long training walk this race cycle (at the Texas 10 College Station race) because 3 of the kids and I got a horrible stomach bug the night before.  Never in my years of mothering have I had a night like this and I'm hoping to never have one again.  As I'm editing my goal before I post today, I cannot imagine moving from this chair, much less doing a half marathon.  Getting to the finish line is going to feel incredible if I manage that in two weeks.

Strategy
Turnover!  I am working on my form and I recently found that my cardiovascular system is being challenged much more than before.  I'm going to try to do some of my shorter workouts at a much quicker pace while keeping my long walks slow.  I can hit about 180 steps/minute and close to an 11:00 min/mi for short periods of time.  Knowing that's possible for a mile makes me think it's possible for longer stuff as well if I just put in the time.

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