White Rock Lake Centennial Half

A 10k PR does not a half marathon make!

Last Sunday, I hit a huge PR at the Heels and Hills 10k and man, did it boost my confidence!  So much so, that it lead me to take some risks at the WRL Centennial half that turned out to be very poor decisions.  When you have a Galloway runner who is "comfortable" with 13.1 miles, take away her intervals and what you have left is no longer a half marathoner .. you have a 10ker.  At least that's my experience.  Not to mention the heat and the fact that I haven't had a long run (over 7 miles) in a while ... But I'm not one to blame poor performance on anything but myself.  If I'm late to band practice, I'm not gonna blame it on my ride, you know ;p

I decided the night before that I was gonna go for it; try to run the entire 13.1 without my intervals.  I knew it would more than likely mean that my pace would be slowed and I wasn't going to come near my half PR, but right now it's more about gaining stamina to run straight through a half.  Well folks, Saturday wasn't that day!

I woke up in the morning and felt great!  Breakfast went down easy, I was chilly in my shorts and tank and on the drive to the race, guess who I ran into on 635 E?  None other than Michelle K, my new race buddy!  I looked up from the road to see a window rolled down with her head sticking out - great surprise!  So I followed them to a parking lot and on the drive, I hear my new fav song!  A seemingly perfect morning so far.  I stuck with Team Kennemer and we found more friends - Rick, Brad and Michelle, and more TIR tutu members! We made our way down to the start line and I left my friends to stand with the 2:30 pace group.

The first few miles felt ok, and I decided to stay just ahead of the pacers.  In my head, if I was right behind them, it would've seemed like I was trying to catch up .. didn't figure that was a good feeling to have for 13 miles!  After a while, I was SURE we were running faster than an 11.  I heard a woman in front of me say something like "yeah, we're around a 10:16" and I thought SHIT! That's way too fast!!  No way I can hold this for 13.  I got so angry at the pace group.  Why were they pushing so much so soon??  Who picked these frauds??

I was definitely getting tired from the sun, but the wind was tricking me into believing I wasn't really that hot.  So when I hit mile 5 I finally stopped for some water and took my first Hammer Gel .. but it was too little too late at that point.  The 2:30 group was out of site.  I kept running till about mile 6 but things were going downhill from there.  LOTS. OF. WALKING.  Not only was I not running like I wanted, but I wasn't even doing intervals.  Just a bunch of walking with some spurts of running.  I lost it a little between here and mile 8 or 9.  They all kinda blend together.  I got goosebumps somewhere around 7 and was seeing yellow a little bit on and off from there to the end.  When you get overheated like that, you run through a ton of different emotions.  I went from the verge of tears to wanting to laugh out loud!  (Did I mention I chose to run without my handheld water?  Yeah, like I said, lots of bad decisions).  When the 2:40 run/walk pace group smoked past me, I knew it was over.  Wow.

So I crept up on the finish line and saw Rick waiting for me which was cool.  I was previously under the impression that after a race like this one, the worst thing is having people you know waiting for you at the end .. especially when you come in almost 20min after your projected time.  Man was I wrong.  I was so down on myself, overheated, nauseous, disappointed (need I go on?) I thought for sure I didn't want to be around anyone.  But Rick walked me up to where Brad and Michelle were sitting and eventually Erik and Michelle (yes, there are a lot of Michelle's in my blogs) found us.  Erik "tricked" me into drinking a beer and all was good. 

After I got home and took a shower, I finally got my appetite back - in FULL FORCE.  I picked up my dad and met my mom and sister for food and my mood was completely lifted.  Turns out, I didn't care much that I had such a shitty race and an even worse finish time.  The day started out with friends and ended with friends.  I didn't perform well because I wasn't ready for it.  Not much to do about that come race day!  I made some bad decisions.  Ok, lessons learned.  Now let's move on!  A DMer left this comment for me the other day:

Some runs are good and some are bad. The key to long term running passion is savoring the good and letting the bad roll off your back.

Oh, I almost forgot.  My splits ..

11:00

10:52

10:53

11:10

11:16 .. turns out the pace group weren't frauds .. they were spot on, ha!

12:07

12:01

13:12

13:54

15:24

14:21

14:52

14:38

14:45 (last .27) ...

For a grand total of 13.27 miles in 2:49:36 for an avg of 12:47 min/mile.  woo. hoo.

The Aftermath
I was totally expecting to be feel beat down and wanting to hang up my running shoes after this race, but I don't.  No post-race blues for me this time!  I can't wait to get out there again and really start training more consistently than I have before.  I feel fine about it and I'm ready to get after the next one and just have fun running with my new friends!!  Besides, I'm going to need all the help and training I can get if I want to run the Big Bend 50 in January .. OH SNAP!  Did I just make a big reveal??





So ... What's Next?

Sometime over the past few months, I decided (again) that I needed to do something different in my training.  This seems to be a pattern.  Previously, this would be the point where, after running a few big races, I fall into a burn-out or post race blues, try to get started again, then peter out.  Last time this happened I stopped running and pretty much everything else for almost 6 months.  Being active is not natural for me like so many others.  I'm not a type A personality, I'm not high strung.  I'm pretty laid back; I mosey when I walk, and I enjoy the quieter things in life.  I mean hell, I'm a massage therapist!  I spend most of my work day in a dark room with soft, relaxing music!  That being said, the more active I get, the shorter the burn-out lasts; the more social my running becomes, the less I slack off.  The less I slack off, well, just keep reading. 

Last March-ish, I was lucky enough to run in to an old "friend".  As we reacquainted ourselves, I learned she's a runner too.  Little did I know, she was a RUNNER.  This was right smack at the beginning of my "I'm not putting my running shoes back on!" phase.  Sometime around July, I was starting to miss being on the road, and my old running buddies were talking about the half marathon classes coming up so I decided to make amends with my Asics and start again.  It took a while - being that I started in the ass days of summer - to get my legs back .. but it didn't take long to remember why I stopped.  I was bored.  So I came up with a new goal, turned my old "friend" into a friend, and asked her to help me with a new training program.  (Those results can be found here.)

So here I am again.  Not bored, just .. well .. I have an itch.  I know one thing for sure.  I'm running my first full marathon in November - The Rock N Roll San Antonio.  (I ran my first half there the inaugural year, figured why not return to the 'scene of the crime'!  Plus, I grew up in SA and my parents still live there!) The real question - or answer - is how am I going to train for this??  Back to the first line of this entry, I have decided to switch it up a bit by running without my Galloway intervals.  I played around with the idea of doing some heart rate training, but that requires a level of patience that I don't have.  Plus, it isn't very fun.  Not being stuck to an interval and having the endurance to run continuous opens up many opportunities!  For example, my social running is growing!!  This is soo fun!!  I have a ton of new running friends and even though I'm slower than most of them, there are a few I can keep up with. This is exciting!!  But they don't run intervals.  So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em :).  Another thing.  I respect the 26.2, but I want to make sure I'm prepared to look "her" in the face and say 'move b$tch, get out the way!'  So yes, I'll be running my first marathon with Galloway intervals, but I believe that building my endurance without them can only help my strength to get through all 26.   

Training for the full is going to be exciting!!  HOWEVER.  It's more of the same.  Long runs followed by more long runs.  I've done this before.  PLEASE DON'T TAKE THAT TO MEAN I THINK IT'S GOING TO BE EASY!!  But still, I want something else.  Something that I haven't done before.  Like trying to run a half marathon without the intervals ... faster than I did with the intervals.  Speed.  This is my itch.  The need for speed is nothing new to runners, and I don't claim to be the first to want this.  But I want it.  So much so that running an 11 minute PR in a 10k this weekend (at a 10:46 pace) didn't give me cause to celebrate in true victory fashion; rather, celebrating because I now have a better picture of where I'm starting from. 

And while we're talking about speed, let me break down the Galloway interval for you.  If it hadn't occurred to you before, doing a run/walk is deceiving when it comes to pace.  My PR at the New Year's day half - which I have yet to match in 2 half mary's since then - was run with roughly an 11min/mile and a 3:1 run/walk ratio.  That one minute walk should only add about 30-45 seconds to your pace.  I went back to my race report for that day and most of my run times are sitting right around or under 10:30.  In fact, most of them are below.  (yes, I'm about to steal a line from my own blog) In fact, on March 5th, during the Texas Independence Relay, I ran 6.03 miles in 1:03:28, which is pretty much a 10:30 pace.  Just think about that for a second ... let it marinate.

I'm not making any grand statements.  I will say, however, that there's a chance I can run faster than my brain is letting me.  That 10k didn't kill me.  My legs weren't waisted at the end.  Could I have run harder?  Yep, pretty sure I could .. and I'm pretty sure I will. 

Heels and Hills 10k

I never planned on running the Heels and Hills race - no matter the distance.  It never occurred to me to register for anything less than a half marathon, and I didn't want to run 13.1 on that particular Sunday afternoon because 1) I had to work that afternoon and B) I'm running 13.1 the following weekend.  However, an opportunity arose to jump in last minute on the 10k and I thought, "Hey, why not?  It's been a long time since I raced that distance and it'll give me a reason to get up and get some miles in."  NOTE: I'm not going into detail about how I got in, but I'd like to take this opportunity to say thanks to Carol Creech and Libby Jones - you ladies rock!

So I woke up bright and early, slipped into my running clothes, ate breakfast and was out the door.  Nothing too eventful, it's just a 10k, right?  Las Colinas is a great area to have a smaller race like this one.  The parking was easy and free, I didn't even mind the forecasted thunderstorms.  And an added bonus was the temperature - 70 degrees and dropping!  One of the beautiful things about the smaller races is that on race day, it's much easier to run into friends .. and the good thing about having running friends?  Running into them on race day ;)

I hung around with Michelle K - running the half - until it was her time to start, then it was my turn.  I was standing in line for the port-o-potty when the "gun" went off for the 10k, so I jumped out of line to get going.  Not sure that was the best idea, but everything "came out ok" in the end ... again, sorry to all you non-runners reading this.  Poop jokes are inevitable. 

Ok.  So.  About 1.5 miles in, I realized I was passing people.  This usually happens in longer distances because I don't register myself in the correct corral.  But I was actually passing people.  "Must be because I started about a minute or so after the official GO."  Turns out, starting late is a big ego boost and mental push!!  I passed everyone.  ANOTHER NOTE:  don't get too excited for me just yet.  The people who start in the back are generally people who run at a 12min/mile or walkers .. and I started running AFTER them.  I was running this race without my Galloway intervals (I'll explain later), so I wasn't expecting to do too well.  But it occurred to me that the only person I WASN'T passing was a girl running intervals.  Go figure.  Then about mile 4 or so, a group of women smoked me, but that's ok.  I'd passed so many already I figured I was probably in the mix of those in my pace group.  Cool.  I might not be in the "passing zone" anymore, but I wasn't gonna be road kill.  I'll spare you the rest of the details, but in the end, I didn't let anyone else pass me, and I even caught up with one of the 4 women that got me earlier. 

The last 10k I ran was the Tour de Fleurs in 2009 in 1:17:44 (12:30ish min/mile).  On Sunday at Heels and Hills 10k, a year and a half later?  1:06:49!!  A PR of almost exactly 11 minutes.  Satisfaction. 


with Michelle K after watching her cross the half mary finish!!



Post Race Introspection
Now, I can see some possible frustration on your part as a reader.  An 11 minute PR is awesome, but that still only makes my pace a 10:47, which is pretty close to an 11, which is still not exactly fast.  Me?  I prefer to see it as closer to 10:30, which is still not exactly fast, but still not far from a 10.  In fact, on March 5th, during the Texas Independence Relay, I ran 6.03 miles in 1:03:28, which is pretty much a 10:30 pace.  And on a training run earlier that week, I ran 3ish miles at a 10:15 pace .. both of which were with a 3:1 run/walk interval.  This means my run was actually in the 9s in order to have an average in the 10s.  This intrigues me ... more on that later.