2013 March Madness Half Marathon

I came into this race not sure what to expect, but I was guessing it was either going to go really well and surprise me or really bad.  I was wrong, it went pretty much right down the middle, I didn’t have a bad race but I also didn’t have a good race.

Overall, my race went fine.  I held a pretty steady pace the entire race and only faded a little bit in the last half mile.  My heart rate slowly climbed the entire race and I finished running hard and with nothing left in the tank.  I definitely did not blow up, and didn’t make any pacing mistakes.  I just went slower than usual and couldn’t speed up.

The only thing I think I could have done better was to get some more running outside in prior to the race.  With my work schedule and me getting older and softer, I have trouble getting out to run in the dark when it is below freezing out.  My last real run outside was at Ironman Arizona on Nov 18^th.  Since then I reviewed all my workouts and I did a total of 1 hour of running outside (two easy runs).  I don’t know if this affected my race, but my legs sure are trashed today (Monday after the race).

I’ve done this race 4 of the last 5 years and ran (oldest to most recent):

• ·         1:17:5x
• ·         1:17:4x
• ·         1:18:1x
• ·         1:19:38

The thing I’m most bothered by is that the overall I’m getting slower instead of faster (and the conditions we best this year when I went the slowest).  I will say that over the same time I am getting faster and better at long course ironman racing. 

Maybe I can’t have it all, but I’m going to keep trying to get my run back to where it was about 2 years ago while still holding on to the gains I’ve made on the swim and bike.  So it’s time for a few months of focusing on the run and another half marathon.

The best part about doing this race is that I’m fired up again, and I’ve found that I am the most motivated when I am disappointed in myself and feel like I should have done better.

Ready or Not, 2013 Race Season is here

As usual, I'm way overdue for an update on this blog.

To make a long story short, since Ironman Arizona, I:

• Took two weeks completely off by choice (that's a first)
• started to train again but the holidays and some projects at work got in the way
• got a cold
• started to train again
• got a severe stomach flu which messed up training for 2 weeks
• finally started to train again

Anyway, the third time time around training has been going well.  It was a slow start as I have never had so much down time before.  The first 2-3 weeks were pretty disappointing, but since then I've been feeling really strong and in a really good groove.

One of my favorite races each year is the March Madness Half Marathon in two weeks.  As usual I'm signed up and looking forward to it.  I'm not sure what is going to happen as I have much done much less training than usual, but I'm feeling great, so we'll see what the day brings.

Usually, I have my full race schedule planned a year or more out, but this year, I'm still figuring it out.  Of course I'm focusing on Kona, but I still have to figure out want I want to do between now and then.  I'll get another post up on that soon.

In other exciting news, I'll be returning to the Zoot Ultra Team for the 4th year now.  I can't wait for team camp and am so fortunate to be able to continuing working with Zoot and the Ultra Team Sponsors.  I was also fortunate to have another awesome opportunity this year and will be riding the brand new 2013 Ceepo Katana.  After being on 5 different tri bikes in the last 6 years, I've learned the things that are really important to me (instead of the marketing and aesthetics features) and the Katana has those things.  I'll also post more on this as I build the bike up.