Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon - The Unexpected New PR

This past Sunday was the Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon.   This is my third year running this event and I've come to like this course a lot.  Not super easy as there are a number of hills but it's got about 3,000 runners and this year was their 30th anniversary and were giving away finisher's medals.  Swag snob that I am, I couldn't NOT run....I wanted the medal :-P

Mark and I have been concentrating on our 5k speed so I haven't had much of a focus on the half marathon distance in terms of training.  The thought was to go and do this race for fun, get in some long distance training and enjoy the day.

Yeah..well that went out the window around mile 6, and in a good way.... Let me explain starting around mile 3...

Below is the downside of what I affectionately call "that damn hill". It's the hill that has kicked my butt every year right after crossing Hwy 15 I think and as usual I was dreading it again this year, but we rocked up it and I WASN'T dead. In my head I was like "Huh? Where did that come from? Oh well THAT went good but I'm sure this energy won't last, we haven't been training for this distance." We were on the downhill when Mark took this picture (you can see him in the shadow)

Then a little while later my body was still feeling pretty strong and Mark again took a photo of us while we were running.  How he does it so well I have no idea! :)

So on we went and for anyone that races and knows me pretty well, you know I despise knowing where I'm at time-wise in a race.   When I'm feeling good, I don't want to know how fast/slow I'm going because it subconsciously makes me want to change my pace.   BUT around Mile 6 I was still feeling really good and holding what felt like a good pace so I peeked at my watch...."what the?  That's a sub-9:00 pace.  That can't be right....wait (calculating....) yep.  Wow!  Crap.....now I have to push for a new PR...."

Little did Mark know I was continuing these thoughts for the rest of the race.  Trying to be casual and not get all worked up about what may or may not actually happen at the finish.  I just kept pushing a long a little faster than what felt comfortable and my body kept coming right along with me.   Granted it was a perfect temperature for running, sunny with a nice cool breeze so that likely helped me a lot.  I am not one to do well when I'm too hot or cold.

Around Mile 11 mentally I started to REALLY want the finish line but I was trying hard not to psych myself into feeling more tired or push too hard.   If you ask Mark I think this is about where I started to get pretty quiet as I zoned into my happy place.   In my head I was thinking "c'mon you could PR today, you don't know why, you don't know how but just keep moving!"  

We got on the trail with a little over a mile to go.   Here's a picture Mark took at the Mile 12 Marker.

I could hear the finish line more and more as we pushed through the last mile.   HR was in the low 180's starting that last mile and I was NOT prepared for the new finish.   Instead of going from the trail onto the road through downtown that was relatively flat, the last maybe quarter mile was on some pretty good rolling hills through the backside of town.   Once we got off the trail Mark started to pull me along and we took off just a bit faster.   I spotted my friend Jon near the finish.  Always a great distraction when you see a friendly face!  The last few blocks we fired up the calves, quads and heart rate and pushed into the finish holding our hands together in the air.   HR - 195.  

In my head I was thinking:
"ok catch your breath and THEN look at the watch....don't be disappointed....you may not have done as good as you thought....just know you felt good today....it was better than you expected"

Mark:
"Check it out, you just finished in 1:54:51"

Me:
"Say what?!?!?  That's 3 minutes off my old PR.  Where the frack did that come from?

In my head:
"Yippie skippie!  Holy crap!  Yippie skippie!"

So we grabbed a few quick snacks and a few finishing photos together.   This one below is my favorite

Unfortunately we didn't have time to stick around as we were headed to the Minneapolis 10 Years of Geocaching get together and were going to be cutting it close to get there in time.   That write up will be on our "Life More Complete" blog hopefully within a day or two.

So I was pleasantly surprised with this run and as usual, give a lot of credit to Mark for my success.   I don't think I would push as much without him being by my side.  Love you Handsome ;)

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Oh and the afternoon we had a short conversation about what it would take for each of us to qualify for Boston.   Quite a bit faster than that pace but hey, on a good day you start to wonder what's possible....

5k Training and Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon

I feel like I've bounced back and forth with wedding updates.   Tonight my write up is on our "A Life More Complete" blog so go there to check that out. 

I just wanted to quickly update on training.  We are still concentrated on 5k speed and Wednesday we went to Core/Speed class at ALARC where luckily the "speed" part of the group was doing track repeats.   The schedule was to do 1 mile repeats but a few of us were kind of doing our own thing.   Mark and I needed to do 1/2 mile race pace repeats with a few minutes rest in between.   I did manage to make each of the 5 repeats on pace but my heart rate was averaging high 180's and my legs were Jello.   I did what I needed to do but I can't help but keep thinking.....how the hell am I going to keep up THAT pace for 23 minutes and 18 seconds?!?!?

And unfortunately when we got to the Wednesday night training, we got out of the car and out of no where I started feeling a pinch in my right glute/hamstring.   It hurt when I walked but was ok while I ran.   By the end of the evening and most of the next day it was tight and painful mostly behind my knee (argh!!!)  But luckily today (Friday) it seems to be mostly gone.   I've been taking Advil and using BioFreeze so I'm guessing that helped it heal.

Short easy run tomorrow morning and then we are off to a geocaching 10 year anniversary event for the afternoon and getting to go to the Owl City concert.   I managed to win tickets from 101.3 KDWB on Twitter :D   Then we are both hoping for a soak in the spa.   Sunday morning is the Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon.   We haven't been training for this distance so we are mostly doing it for fun (and the 30 year anniversary finisher's medal).  I keep telling myself this race is for fun but subconsciously I know I want to still pull at least an OK time.   Not wanting to push for a new 13.1 PR but at least well under a 10 min/mile pace average.

We are hoping to maybe make some time and find mental/physical energy to get out on our road bikes this weekend.   3 weeks until the Gear West Duathlon and I feel like my attempt at that race is going to be a complete joke at this point.   I haven't been on ANY bike for probably more than a total of 3 hours since last September.  (another sigh....)

Weight loss is ok but very slow since I'm not honestly trying very hard.  I want to be but just not quite sticking to it.  Especially with all these free dinners and drinks we have been getting lately for wedding events.  Still targeting another 4 pounds by my birthday (June 7th)

Trying not to be too depressed over our housing situation.  Absolutely no idea how we are going to come up with the spare cash to make the downpayment so I get really bummed out thinking we are going to be married and still live in TWO houses :(  In the meantime we are working on going through all of our stuff to get rid of what we can at my family's garage sale at the end of May and get my placed cleaned up for showing.  Whenever that can actually happen.  Stay tuned....