Race Weekend Recap

(This should have been posted on Wednesday or Thursday but google wouldn't let me.)

It's a little late but here is my first real post about my training...

This past weekend I ran the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon with my girlfriend. It wasn't my best time but, I decided it would be more fun to stick with my girlfriend since I've never finished a race with her...and it was more fun running with her the whole time. I know I pissed her off a lot before and during the run. I was tossing and turning all night and she had trouble sleeping which made her a tad bit crabby in the morning. I'm not sure how many times she told me to slow down during the race. Maybe it was a good thing I did considering the heat and humidity. I've never seen so many people passed out on the side of a half marathon course. The full marathon course entrance at mile 10 was shutdown due to the heat and humidity after about 2 hours into it. I think about 2/3 of the marathon participants made it before it was closed, congratulations to them. By the end of the race 15 people had been sent to the hospital.

I've been wondering about the people who required medical attention during and after the race...did they not train enough? Did they skip important training runs because of the late season snow? Did they run too fast? Were they experienced runners? Did they drink enough water/Gatorade? I guess I'll never know. I played football in the south and never had any problems during practice in August. It's hard to imagine passing out from running. The closest I've come was when I stopped sweating on a 100 degree day last summer around mile 14 of a 16 mile run after drinking close to 150 ounces of water. I walked/ran the last 2 miles but never felt as if I was going to pass out. Hopefully everyone in St. Louis was alright and everyone will learn from their mistakes.

I'm pretty well into training at this point...

This week has been fairly light as far as training goes. I swam about 800 meters on Monday with 2 other people, 1 being my girlfriend in the lane. I wasn't keeping track of time but the other girl in the lane kept me on my toes since I was determined not to let her pass me which she didn't...until she switched to an open lane. Last night was Wednesday so it was track night. It was a great night for running and my running group ran at a different track which happened to be almost empty, lucky us. The workout was 6-8 x 600m with alternating 200m and 400m recovery periods. I stopped after 7 of them since most everyone else was gone...someday I'll be faster and finish when people are still there. Overall it went pretty well. Today I did a spinning class but took it easy after 20 minutes since I'm signed up for a Duathlon this Saturday. After spin class I ran a mile at about a 9:20 pace hoping it will help my transition from bike to run so my legs don't feel like my whole body does when I try to swim...a brick.