Santa Rosa (1/2) Marathon: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered

As some of you may know, I'm not too happy with my time, and it also confuses me. I actually added time to my previous race, with a finish time of 3:04:46. My last race? Sweatshirt, gloves, poncho, run/walking hunched over to avoid the freezing rain being blown off the ocean on the Great Highway. Perhaps I was motivated to go faster by the cold. So I was certain that I'd knock a good amount of time off of that one, but I let go of my LaLa Land goal of 2.5 hrs at the 7 mile point, when I realized that I wasn't going to magically pull under 10-minute miles out of my hat.

What confuses me is that so much of this race was great. My 4, 5, & 6-mile times were my fastest ever. I'm new to using my heart monitor thingy (this would make 3 times), so I obeyed that and actually consistently ran more than I ever have. In many ways, this race was a great success. In the past, I mostly walk, then run when I'm feeling it, when a song that moved me came on. This time I kept up my splits pretty consistently throughout the whole race. I learned more about my body and that I really need to not push it. It was difficult to jog slowly when I really wanted to go faster, but I knew that pushing my heart rate up would only make recovery time that much longer.

My heart rate was great. In fact, towards the end of the race, my monitor kept beeping at me to go faster, but my feet were quite unhappy with that. Around mile 11, I started fading, but being so close to the finish made me go ahead and run even more.

So, I ran more than ever, and I felt very strong the whole time. I can definitely tell that I'm in a much better place than a year and a half ago. I shall take what I learned and keep working, and I know that my next race will be better. That should be the Kaiser Marathon in February, which I've done a couple times. I also think that I'm going to try harder to get into Nike next fall. That was my first race, and it is so much fun.