Saturday, March 12, 2011

Hindsight

I completed another Six Tunnels Half Marathon. I ran this race while I was pregnant last year, and also blogged about it on my prenatal fitness blog.
Long story short, 6 weeks of training not pregnant is in no way better than 16wks of training while pregnant. Especially when you have a stomach bug for a week of the insufficient 6 weeks of training.
I finished with a better time and felt better during the race last year! The only thing that was better this time was not having to deal with the constant sensation of needing pee that comes from having a baby sitting on your bladder.
Hindsight immediately provides me with some oversights I made this time, in addition to trying to increase my mileage so quickly.
1) Last year it was REALLY windy and I was cold at first. I also got a weird tan on my legs from the sweat and dust settling on them. So I opted to wear pants and a long sleeved dryfit top. I was so hot this time! It was a beautiful day and much less breezy and I would have been much more comfortable in short sleeves and shorts.
2) I thought I could run the entire thing, rather than doing the run-walk intervals I did last year. This resulted in running 8mi at a great personal pace. Then I slowed down for 2mi. Then I walked a good 75% of the last 3mi.
3) I never felt particularly hungry or woozy on any of my training runs like I had pregnant so I thought that I'd rather not have to hold anything and skipped out on any energy gels. I got dizzy around mile 11 and wished I'd had a gel to down a mile or so back.

So, I'm both proud of myself and disappointed. Proud for the plain and simple fact that I did it. Disappointed that I didn't think things through enough, couldn't run the whole thing and finish with a better time.
Oh, well, I'll consider it a wash if I lost a pound and have more muscle definition in my legs :D

3 comments:

  1. You know, my husband was just telling me this morning that we have good runs and bad runs and that we shouldn't get discouraged after a not-so-great run. I think its AMAZING that you did a half marathon AT ALL! I'm hoping to train for one sometime in the future... =)

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  2. It took me 2hrs and 49min. I was hoping to finish in 2.5hrs. Oh well. Next time!

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