Sunday, October 12, 2008

World Wide Half Marathon: Think Global...Run Local

Well I ran my second 1/2 marathon this weekend. Much lower key than the last (and only other) one. Biggest reason is that I got to decide the start time and I had no crowds to cheer me on. I slept in and ran when I was ready. Which felt great. I had printed out my bib with my number #0134 the night before. I finally got myself up out of bed and ready to run around 10:00am. I hadn't really decided on a route yet....that is the beauty of the Garmin 305. Freedom to run where ever I want until the display says 13.1 miles. SMILE The long route that I have previously run was closed because of a bridge repair. I set out the only other direction out of town that doesn't involve a major highway. Run felt really good. I tried to record something to send in but without prior practicing...it went badly. In other words...no recording. But I did figure it out when I got back...so maybe a recording on my next long run????? Who knows??
I headed out of town and decided that I needed to do half of my mileage going away from my house so that I couldn't be tempted to stop early. This plan worked out well. I ran past fields of soybean and cotton...also horses. Very nice day...felt good on the way out. One thing I didn't realize is that I was running with the wind so on the way back I had to work against it. Good thing is that the wind helped to cool me down.
I finished my 13.1 miles in 2:24:36. It wasn't a PR but I was really happy. The previous weekend I had run a 5K and gotten a PR. My mileage in the past two weeks had not been at the level that I wanted but I had gotten up to 10 miles on my long run. Now that I have no races in the near future I can concentrate on running for fun. Plus this is getting to be the best time for running because it is cooling down for Fall...yea!
I really enjoyed being part of the World Wide Half Marathon. I had run other virtual races on Sparkpeople.com but there wasn't so much cool stuff involved...like the race bib, goody bag and Phedips podcast with shoutouts. I waited to listen to Phedips "Cheers from a little blue bubble"podcast until my last hour of my run. I was so excited to hear my call in and to hear people cheering me on by name....it really helped me in my run. I greatly appreciated it.
I am going to take a break from running for the rest of the weekend and start again strong on Monday.

Congratulations to all the other runners in the World Wide Festivals of Races.

1 comment:

ShirleyPerly said...

Congrats on your WW Half Marathon! I love virtual races too. There's another one end of March called the Simply Stu Triathlon if you're interested in doing more than running. I'll definitely be mentioning it on the RunningMates blog when the date gets closer.