North Shore Half Marathon Recap

This is almost two weeks old now, but I figured I would right it up anyway.  Since I know you all love my sweaty, disgusting super flattering race photos.  Spoiler alert: the one-word version of this race recap is "ouch".

I signed up for the North Shore Half in May, a few days before I left for Reach the Beach.  I was grumpy about going into the relay injured and slow and wanted another race to look forward to.  Yes folks, this is how my brain works.  "Injury got you down?  Sign up for a half marathon that's only a month away!"  It seemed logical at the time.  I had great memories of the course from running with my mom (her first half!) last year, and figured a nice, low-key half would be a good way to kick off this cycle of marathon training.  Plus, I love running races at home because I can count on my awesome parents to drop me off at the start, pick me up at the finish, and oh btw watch my puppy while I'm out on the course.

Surprisingly enough, my knee did not magically get better after Reach the Beach, making long runs difficult.  So I went into this race having not done a run of more than 8 miles since my spring marathon in mid-March (and that 8 miler only happened the weekend before the race).  And oh, by the way, a few days before the race I got this lovely email:

Subject: [READ] Weather Advisory

So given the weather and my lack of training, I decided my goal for the day would be a 2:17, a "safe" 10 minutes over my half marathon PR.

FAIL.

This race was one of the toughest non-marathons I've ever run, up there with my first 10K.  The course was hillier than I remembered.  Despite the relatively tame elevation profile (aside from the Park Street Hill at Mile 7) -- it just never felt like we were running flat.  My right hip started bothering me on the uphills early on in the race, and unfortunately hasn't stopped since.

It was also hot in that weird way where you don't so much feel hot as like your body just isn't functioning properly for some reason you can't quite put your finger on.  Or maybe that's just me.  I kept drinking fluids (and pouring them all over myself) but I couldn't get in a groove and my body just did not want to run.    By mile 9 or so, I could feel my heart pounding even at an 11+ min pace.  At that point, I decided my only goal was to count this as a long run and not do anything that would derail my training.

Turns out, I pretty much combined the 5 mile pace run and 8 mile long run I was supposed to do that weekend after all:

As usual, first mile looks a little suspect -- I think my watch hit 1 mile before the course did

While this definitely wasn't my best race ever (official time of 2:30:43 -- almost 24 minutes off my PR and three minutes slower than running this same race with my mom last year but infinitely more painful) I think it was a good way to start off the training cycle. I checked off my first real long run of the training cycle, realistically adjusted my goals before and during the race so I didn't do anything stupid, and (most difficult for me) accepted my disappointing finish time and moved on.

I was pretty much wrecked for the rest of the day.  Lucky for me, neither of my parents kicked me off the couch when I passed out there for the better part of the afternoon and pretty much let me buy whatever I wanted for dinner at the grocery store (chips with guacamole and salsa plus homemade cheeseburgers -yum!).  Have I mentioned how much I love going home?


Back soon with a recap of last weekend's 10K ...