Rock N Roll St. Louis Half Marathon

I went into my last half marathon with very little training but at least with knowing that I was running a half marathon. I had completely forgotten that I had even signed up for this particular race. I just haven't been running and training like I should be. So overall this was a horribly slow race that I felt pretty darn miserable for most of the run.

I started the race by meet several of my coworkers at work and then we rode the metro link from downtown to the race start. My friends Rebecca and Tracy were doing the full and several of the doctors and nurses I work with were doing the half. I hung out with Rebecca and Tracy while we waited for the race to start.

We took selfies while we waited to start.

After the start, Tracy and Rebecca quickly left me in their well trained dust. I held a decent run/walk interval for a while before getting passed up my Dr. Mark, whom of course I had to grope, it just wouldn't be right if I didn't smack him on the butt, right? So anyway after I was mildly inappropriate with one of my physicians, I kept chugging along but I started to notice some pain in my right ankle. My 5K time was 43:23.

A very crappy picture of me somewhere around mile 6 when I smelled sausages. I tend to be my most social when I'm running so I of course I had to say something. So of course they gave me a PBR, cause why not? I was still maintaining a decent pace for my lack of training and my 10K time ended up being 1:29:12.

My ankle started to really bother me in mile 7 but I kept going knowing that I had a couple of coworkers waiting to cheer me on at the 8 mile marker. By mile 9 though I gave in and had the medical tent wrap up my ankle. After that I couldn't run any more but I was bound and determined to cross the finish line. I had had a couple of DNS but I have never had a DNF and I didn't want this to be my first.

My 10 mile time was 2:34:29 and the next three miles were even worse. I struggled to finish the race and even sat down a couple of times along the race to rest my ankle. I was limping pretty bad and the pain was making me miserable. That last 3.1 miles took me nearly an hour and I ended up finishing in 3:37:59.

PFTW 10/28 - 11/3

Monday
Rest and Recovery day

Tuesday
Rest and Recovery day

Wednesday
Personal Training

Thursday
1 hour on a walk 4 run 1 interval

Friday
Personal Training

Saturday
Run 3 miles on a walk 4 run 1 interval

Sunday
Run 1 hour on a walk 4 run 1 interval

Training Recap

Monday
3 miler at the park across the street from work. I did the 4 minutes walk and 1 minute of run and I felt fine. Ended up finishing my 3 miles in 42:41.

Tuesday
Ran for 1 hour with the 4:1 intervals in the park across the street from work again. I completed 4.14 miles.

Wednesday
Personal Training appointment, mostly chest and back.

Thursday
Rest day

Friday
Rest day

Saturday
Rest day. Spent a little bit of time at the race expo. Picked up a stick to roll out my calves in addition to my foam roller. Got some cute gray and pink 5 inch inseam running shorts, a few GUs and a cute fleece hat to wear during runs so my head doesn't get cold. I couldn't spend much time at the expo since I barely made it to the event before it closed but overall it seemed like your standard rock n roll expo. There was a big brooks shoe that you could ride ala ride the bull but alas I did no try it out.

Sunday
S. Louis Rock N Roll Half Marathon completed in 3:38:02. I had a lot of problems with my right ankle and ended up having to stop at a medical tent to get it wrapped but I did finish and I will have a race recap up soon. I never did the walk to run ratio, I just did whatever felt ok.

Fun Foto Friday

PFTW 10/21 - 10/27

I'm once again starting over since I never keep going. I'm trying a very basic walk/run ratio, currently walk 4 minutes/run 1 minute. I'm going to do this for a little while until I feel like I've started to improve then I'll move to a 3:2 and so and on and so forth. For now I'm just focusing on rotating 3 mile and 1 hour runs until I start a marathon training program in December. That's right I'm going to take another stab at the Go! St. Louis Marathon. Last year I was a DNS for this race which was kind of sad for me actually since I have run and completed a race in this series every year since I first started this craziness in 2010. Anyway enough of my rambling, here is my plan for the week...

• Monday
• Run 3 miles
• Tuesday
• Run 1 hour
• Wednesday
• Personal Training
• Thursday
• Run 1 hour
• Friday
• Personal Training
• Saturday
• Run 3 miles
• Sunday
• St. Louis Rock N Roll Half Marathon
• Goal A 2:53 - New Half Marathon PR
• Goal B 2:55 - New Course PR
• Goal C 3:20 - Not my worst half ever... :)

I'm aware that I have scheduled no rest days in there but I'm fully willing to ditch that Saturday run if I feel like my legs are too tired. Add on to all of that lots and lots of foam rolling and hopefully Sunday won't kill me.