Exercise Log 5.4.14 (Pittsburgh Half Marathon)

After the training and the talking and the stressing it was finally race day, and I was ready as I’ll ever be. I had a fantastic time out today, well except for getting my car out of downtown after the race was over due to the race sections still being corded off… the day was awesome and I felt really good about how I did!

From the training I had done in the previous weeks I was concerned of getting a good time, and while I’m not racing competitively time is still a personal motivator and I gotta set some practical goals. Most of my training runs were a good 3+ hours and while I admittedly wasn’t training for pace as much as endurance, a poor run last week left me really concerned. Still though I did estimate a good set of goals for myself for the race, and felt like I did great. I fixed all the problems I noted in my previous log… it was a horrible run but it definitely helped a lot.

So what were my goals going into the race and how did I do? I usually set multiple goals on a project like this. 2 hours 30 minutes was my “cutoff for feeling good about the run” goal. In the Boston half marathon if you can’t run 2:30 you shouldn’t even try it because they kick you off the course. My training runs were all considerably worse than 2:30. My second goal was 2:15, which I felt like would be real good and knew would be a challenge. I somewhat suspected I would fall just outside this, like 2:20-ish. Finally my unrealistic and idealistic goal was under 2 hours. Turns out I was wrong to view it as unrealistic while I did not get under 2 hours I came really close – 2:04:11 was my official time. So pretty damn good I think considering it was my first half and it was definitely representative of the effort I put in to improve to go do it.

Most importantly though was the people who encouraged me and motivated to do better because frankly with all the weight lifting I do I could take or leave any kind of intense cardio but it’s helping me grow in new ways and I’m glad to have done it. My running partner Trish was supportive all year making sure I kept cardio consistent and getting me into running races in the first place and I also got a lot of motivation from my friend Jon and his running partners Melissa and Val seeing their posts on Facebook about their progress and runs. It motivated me to get out there and take this more seriously, which after the huge slowdown I experienced from the winter freeze and the weight lifting I felt was really needed to get anywhere close to the level of performance I had today.

Click the arrows to see all my pictures from today’s race!
Check out the run on MapMyRun

Now I can take the rest of this week off from all physical activity and feel mighty accomplished, between this and my deadlift PR last Friday I feel completely satisfied with where my progress is at right now. Still a long way to go though! I might have to aim to beat that 2 hour time next year!