Redemption

I wasn't supposed to run a PR today.  I really, really wasn't.  There are many reasons why I should not have run a PR.

1) My training plan called for 14 miles easy with the last 20 minutes at moderate pace.  My easy pace is somewhere between 9:00 per mile and 9:30 per mile.  My moderate pace would have been about 8:30 or so.  That would put me at the finish line right around 2 hours for the 13.1 mile half.  I was totally find with doing that and was ready for a nice, easy long run.

2) The half marathon was my master during 2008.  I ran in three of them and did not have success: San Diego (one hot mess), Hartford (great, but I planned to run only 8 miles of it, so I don't know how that would have played out if I had finished), and Nike Women's (one hilly mess).  San Diego and Nike both made me question my marathon aspirations and made me think that my glory days of running were pre-injury.  I think I had mostly accepted that fact in the last few months and had convinced myself that my only goal is to enjoy running.

3) I got a horrible night's sleep.  At 8pm, I turned off my light.  I heard my watch beep at 9pm and  I was still just laying there.  Then, I heard it beep again at 10pm.  At that point, I figured I might as well get up and register for the Chicago Marathon, so I did that right when it opened online.  Around 10:10, I put on The Daily Show, shut off the light, and hoped that it would lull me to sleep.  That took until past 11pm, but I did feel myself getting more and more tired.  There I was, about to get a maximum of 6 hours of sleep.  But, of course, the sleep gods were still not smiling on me.  I had one of the most restless night's sleep I've had in a while (exceeding what I thought was bad last Sunday night when me and half the women at my school were tortured by bad dreams...weird, eh?).  Last night, I was having very vivid dreams about running the half and about what I'm supposed to teach this week and I kept thinking in my dream that I had to go to school the next day.  Not nightmares, but dreams that are so vivid, it's like you're awake.  It was awful.  I was awake again at 3am, but only for a bit, thankfully.  The alarm went off at 5am, and surprisingly, I popped right out of bed and started the pre-race routine.

So, everything was against me.  I even pinned my number on my shirt while it was inside out (I tore my shirt off at Fulton during my warm-up around 7:30am to fix it).  But, the weather was San Francisco at its finest.  That was one good thing.

Another thing going for me at the start were my new shoes (totally singing New Shoes lyrics in my head: "I put some new shoes on, and suddenly everything is right.").  I bought these because they are the "performance" sibling of my training shoes.  I decided to buy these for races and fast workouts so that I could be faster (they are so darn light on my feet) and so I could train my legs muscles to work more than they do in my stabilizing trainers.  These are the Mizuno Wave Elixir.  They were an elixir for my warm-up, at least.

The course was also working for me.  Miles 1-4 were flat, miles 4-7 were downhill or flat (read: very fast miles for me...the same miles that allowed me to cook during Bay To Breakers), then 7-10 were very slightly downhill to the turn-around.  Miles 10-12 were very slightly uphill.  The last mile was uphill...when I struggled to keep my moderate pace, but actually did so.

So, the Kaiser Permanente ended up being a great race.  I PRed by two and a half minutes (my first half marathon in March 2006 was my previous best), I did not totally destroy my body, and only my right foot is worse for the wear (my shoes dug into my fourth toe which bled throughout the race and I have a blood blister on the ball of that foot as well).  So, the shoes were not so much elixir in the end.  Maybe I shouldn't have tried to run fast, and maybe I'll suffer all this week, but after negative splitting the first three miles (faster each mile) and then getting a boost on the downhills to really negative split, I just decided to go for it.  It wasn't until I hit the 10 mile marker that I knew I could PR, so I kept the charge on.  And, I just ran happy.  Well, I ran happy until the last mile, when I suffered.  There is definitely going to be a picture of me near the finish and it won't be pretty.

I'm feeling pretty relieved right now as well as redeemed.  I can now continue with my training plan as prescribed, without wondering what kind of shape I'm really in, and without pushing it just to see if I can.  I have confidence that the training I'm doing is making me better.  I also have rid myself of the half marathon demons that plagued me last year.  And, I beat my principal.