Middle Half Marathon is almost here

I realize that it has been a while since I have wrote a blog so I thought I would update you on a few things that have been going on. First off, I have enjoyed not feeling the pressure of trying to improve my time so much.  I have actually found my love for running again by simply forgetting about the pace and turning my phone off where it will NOT tell me what my pace and miles are until I have either ended the run or if I double tap the screen.  I have also learned that I do better when I am not running with music.  I will get to that in a minute.  I have been spending some much needed time with my family and we went to the pumpkin patch yesterday.  That will be another post.

As the title states, the Middle Half Marathon is almost here.  It will be here in 6 days to be exact!!  I have mixed feelings about this race.  I am excited but at the same time all I hope for is to do better than what I did at the Women's Half Marathon and I would most definitely be a happy camper.  This particular half is extremely popular.  It's course is flat so there have been numerous personal records set by individuals records broken by the first time finisher.  I am looking forward to this because I have read on the website that you have people lining the course to cheer for you as you are running.  This is why I have read that they encourage to not listen to music.  So you can hear all the people that are cheering for you.  Not to mention, I have learned that I tend to do better running without music.

Since this race was only 2 weeks away from the Women's Half, I wanted to make sure that I didn't overdo it before hand and not be able to run at all.  So I ran a 3 mile recovery run the Sunday after the Women's Half, I was not out to break any of my personal records that I have made so it turned out to be a very enjoyable run. It also loosened my legs up quite a bit and I wasn't as sore as I was last year.  Through the week I did another 3 mile run but I had issues with my shins tightening up and wasn't sure why.  I had a friend of mine that has run several half marathons and marathons tell me that it was probably due to the LACK of stretching that I was doing.   Also, the team captain said it could be from training those muscles are hard in preparation for the half marathons coming up.  Either way I am just glad that it is starting to go away and I believe that making an extra effort to make sure that I stretch before and after has made a huge difference.

So Saturday I did a 6 mile run with a friend and it was awesome. We enjoyed a nice run and was able to spend about an hour just talking and catching up. Since the race is going to be flat, I wanted to make sure that I still had "long" run in me without having issues.  Six miles is almost halfway through a half marathon so I decided that would be a good number to do.  Everything worked great and I also got to run this morning.  The group that I was running with on Sunday mornings is no longer running since the Middle Half is this coming Saturday and I am going to be honest, I thought I was going to go through withdrawals. I had been meeting almost every Sunday to run for almost 2 months. That was until I talked to another friend that will be running the Middle Half as well and we met this morning and ran 3 miles.  I had my fastest 1k and fastest mile this morning.  How that happened I have no idea but it was nice to know that my body was capable of running that fast.

I am very thankful that I have found my love of running again and I hope that I am able to continue to remember that it doesn't matter what your time is.  All that matters is that you tried your best.  In the end, that is all that counts.  So until next time.