Sunday, December 1, 2013

Lessons Learned


I am grateful for soreness after a half marathon
(because it means I did it!)

 
I did my first of 3 half marathons. The next 2 I will be doing in May of 2014. This is not my first ever half marathon or my best timed half marathon, but it is the first one that I have been in the right frame of mind to do a half marathon.

Lets back up first I finished my half marathon in the Twin Cities on Saturday, and for MN weather this time of year, it was a pretty mild 32-35 degrees. This is still the coldest I have run a long race in though. My time was over my 3 hour goal mark. At around the 10 mile mark my exercise induced asthma kicked in due to the cold. I had my inhaler with so I was ok but because of that those last 3 miles were brutal and slowed down my time considerably. Am I upset? After all I trained for months for this only to have this happen. No, I am not upset and the main reason is that I am at a much better place mentally than I have ever been in my life. I can look at what I did and say holy crap I just did 13.1 miles!!  It doesn’t matter if I ran, walked, jogged, shuffled, skipped etc to the finish line I did it!  I committed to this months ago put in the training and did it!

I also learned a very valuable lesson. I need to stick to warmer races for long races. Shorter races I can and have done in cooler months but long races stick to warmer months.  Now I look to future races.

I said I was going to do Insanity but I still want to run 3 times a week and I think the better program for that is Les Mills Combat which are fitness dvd’s that are martial arts, weight training, and HIIT(High Interval Intensity Training) not as intense as Insanity but will give me a good workout and I will be able to run 3 times a week.

Just a quick thank you to my accountability partner Pam whose daily emails helped me out tremendously and my friend Trish Blackwell whose weekly podcast were amazing. The positive feedback from both of them was essential to my training. Again anyone who wants a great podcast and inspirational website go here http://www.trishblackwell.com/.

Well everyone have a great week I will write more on Les Mills Combat later and as always enjoy the journey.


 

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