Lifeline of Ohio Half

Race results are really quite arbitrary. There can be so many other factors affecting not just our performance, but the results in general. I seem to recall hearing that there is no official “world record” for running, just “world bests”, because there are so many factors at play.

Ha, can you see what’s coming?

So Saturday I ran my slowest ever half marathon. Was the finish time on the clock indicative of my overall fitness, of my skill as a runner? Maybe.. or perhaps it is a better indicator of muggy temperatures and a dramatic raise in mileage over the past few weeks..

I’m not making excuses – well, except I suppose I am. But I need to remember: I ran this race near the beginning of a marathon training cycle. I’d already run 24 miles in the 5 days leading up to the race. I maybe wasn’t the freshest. In the end, I ran the race since I had 15 miles on my schedule anyway, so I shouldn’t really see it as ‘a race’. It was a long run, with gatorade provided (warm gatorade, ew!)

I ran the whole way with Doug, which was nice. I will admit that we both danced around the idea of quitting early (it was a two loop course) .  We were both thinking about 8 min miles, but it just didn’t pan out. Oh well, we got our long run in…

Two weeks into training and I’m still batting 1000!!!