Lake Merced Half Marathon (and checking in with my goals)

Rocking my 2nd place (age group) medal and participant ribbon

This was just a test.


To say running hasn't been highest on my priority list might be a little bit of an understatement.  A new apartment and a new job kind of edged out speedwork in the "important life things" category, so for the past month or so I've been running a maximum of 35 miles a week, with long runs up to 13 miles. 


Then Mike found this race, which is a mile from our house and on the loop we run all the time, so we both decided to sign up and use it to gague our fitness levels.  Anything faster than my half split from San Francisco (about 1:46) would be a PR, but I honestly wasn't expecting to run anything faster than 1:50 because my runs have been so inconsistent.


The course was 2 4.5 mile loops plus a 4.1 mile loop.  Mike stayed with me for the first loop and a half but I could tell I was totally slowing him down.  I was feeling OK but not great, and was not totally thrilled about having to do roughly the same thing 3 times.  I finished the first loop in 34:58 and started in on the second just kind of going through the motions.  Halfway through the second lap Mike took off, which was fine with me because I didn't want to keep slowing him down.


I spent the rest of that loop passing then being passed by the same girl, and felt like I was slowing down. Sure enough, my second lap was 35:47.  By this point I had passed the girl from lap 2 for good and was just ready to be done.  I was coming up on another girl (who looked about my age), and for about a mile or so we were running right next to each other.  I caught myself thinking "this sucks, obviously she's just going to beat me," but then I realized that attitude was ridiculous.  I could tell she was working harder than I was, so I just relaxed and decided I'd wear her down and take off....which I kind of did (although I wouldn't call it taking off...it was more of just a slight pickup).


The rest of the third loop went by pretty quickly.  I was passing a lot of people doing the shorter race, which is always a big mental boost even if I'm not in direct competition with them.  I rounded the last corner into the parking lot well below my goal of 1:46, and crossed the line at 1:42:30.  I was the third female, and 2nd in my age group!  (Mike ran a huge PR too...1:38:59!!)


Going up to collect my medal:

I got some pretty sweet stuff in the goodie bag, too

So now that we're nearing the end of 2010 (holy crap how did that happen), I wanted to take a look at the goals I set back in January:


Goals for 2010:
1. Qualify for Boston (hopefully at the LA Marathon) - DONE (San Francisco Marathon)
2. Run at least two full marathons - DONE (LA and SF)
3. Set PRs at 2 or more different distances - DONE (5K, Half Marathon, and Marathon!)
4. Run at least one trail race - hopefully in October or November


Whew, it's been a pretty awesome year!