A New Half Effort

dolliemix

Half marathon race report!


First Half marathon attempt for me. First six miles were great. I started a good bit behind the 2hour pacers in wave 3. And watched them gradually drift out of my sight. Felt something in my left thigh coming up to mile six where I've never felt pain before. That pain moved from there to the rest of my legs and by mile 9 I was not enjoying the race at all. I guess I didn't train as well as I had thought I had. I was hoping I'd get a second wind by the 10th, 11 th or 12 th mile. It never came I was actually close to tears at one stage. It became mental for me because physically it was hell. Reminded myself that I was well able to run 4 mile/ 3 miles etc as I passed the mile markers very slowly! Reminded myself that I'd been training for this all summer. I really had to focus just to finish. I guessed my aim of under 2.30 was gone because I literally shuffled for the last four miles. Walked that hill at the end and got a cheer from a guy I knew from college. It helped. I shuffled to the finish. The clock said 2 hrs 47. I wasn't sure what time I'd gone over the start line but i had heard someone sayit was 10.15 as we crossed. I began to think that I might be around 2 hrs 30 after all!

Results went up on website :

2.28.13

Nules10

Well done dolliemix and well within the time you aimed for too. You did great to keep going when it became hard. Great will power. Be very proud of yourself. And as one of the posters en route said "if it was easy everyone would be doing it"

DigiJem

Congrats on your first half, Dollie, that’s great running.

dolliemix

So I won't deny that Half Marathon was hell after 6 miles and I feel I'll have to improve speed and strength if I ever decide to do that again. I'm going to go back to my 5k roots and try this program. Its Hal's 5k intermediate Program and I'm hoping it will help me work on speed. There is a 5k in the Phoenix Park 'Jingle Bells 5k" run by Donore Harriers on 3rd Dec and I'm hoping I'll be ready for that. It's an 8 week program which will give me three weeks to recover. I'll be running 5 times a week instead of 3 so its massive progress if I manage it. Shorter distances though, to make it manageable.

My pb at 5k is 31.30 from April 2010

...love to beat this by Dec and ultimately break 30 mins in 2012!

Think I'll forget about running for a whole week now, do a few 2/3/4 miles runs and begin the new program with a new thread on 9th October.

Thanks to all who have been following this long long journey. I actually can't believe I reached my goal!

rainbow kirby

Sounds like a good plan - best of luck with it

Congrats on the half btw!

dolliemix

Thank you to you Rainbow Kirby...your encouragement has been a huge huge help. You actually started all of this by suggesting Hal's 10k plan when I'd finished that couch to 5k :):)

MarySamsonite

I'm so happy for you Dolliemix for managing to finish well within your goal on Saturday despite being in pain.

Best of luck with the Jingle Bells and I look forward to following your new thread .

dolliemix

Three week rest and I'm back today with a new log.....