Houston Half Marathon

I am officially obsessing over 2 minutes and 30 seconds (truthfully, maybe about 4 minutes). My plan was to run the race at marathon pace; however, after a difficult run on Wednesday, I was questioning my ability to run at the necessary 9:45 pace. To quickly explain, for some reason, on Wednesday I was struggled to run a 30:30 three miler. I was breathing hard and almost drenched with sweat - I was seriously working hard and thought that I was at least running 9 minute miles (if not better). When I hit the three mile mark, I was shocked to see 30:30 staring back at me.

Fast forward to Sunday, I didn't think that I could even maintain a 10:00/mile pace in the race. I decided to just give it a go and see what happened. I was hoping that I could at least finish in 2:10 or less and I think that the math was there but something was off. The trusty Garmin said that I ran 13.3 miles - which, if that is correct, explains my 2 minutes. But, I don't think that it was off this much. Throughout the race, I could never get the miles markers to match with the Garmin. Could not running some of the tangents have made me this off?

I also realized that I run much better whenever I'm running with someone - especially, if I think that they are relying on me to pace them. For the first two loops, I had a partner. I ended up leaving her a bit on the last loop and boy was it hard. I then tried to pick people off - but then, that got discouraging as a few people blew past me.

Mentally, I was in this race. I walked the water stops and not really anything else. It was interesting to see just how many people were walking that last loop and I was determined not to walk. I wanted to finish in under 2:10 - just didn't quite make it.

Now, after doing a bit of math and looking at the computer generated pace charts, I need to run the Turkey Trot 10k in 54:00 minutes to be on track for my marathon goal. Anyone up for some 8:30s at the Turkey Trot? I think I'll need a bit of help.