Saturday February 11th - 18 MILES!!

OK...so its been about a week since the 1/2 marathon. My legs feel better, but my groin and hip are still a tad sore. On Tuesday I was in too much pain so I passed on running. On Thursday Drew and I ran 3 miles instead of 8 and called it a day. It was better than nothing.

So this morning there were 4 of us. Myself, Drew, Kevin and JC. All of us are doing the LA Marathon and its getting close to crunch time so we can all use each other's help. We aimed to leave at 8am and conquer our 18 mile run. For Drew and myself, it will be an all time distance record. For Kevin and JC, an accomplish in their training (as they have already done marathons before).

Kevin and I took off for our run as we planned to run it all non stop for most part. Drew and JC took the 6 minutes run / 1 minute walk route. Immediately my hip was hurting and that made it a bad sign. At mile 1 I started getting slower and slower and began to worry. By 1.5 mile Drew and JC had caught us and I told Kevin to go with them and leave me behind. It felt like a movie or something where you tell the other characters to go ahead and drop the dead weight. I will let the bad guys or wild animals eat me up so you can get further ahead and last longer! I thought about turning around, but instead just kept on walking, cursing everything in sight. Floods of thoughts were in my head, "should I turn around", "I'm going to be angry this weekend", "do I scratch the marathon?".

I continued my walk/hobble for another mile. I reached 2 1/2 miles and was at the Catalina Cruises entrance. I made a bet with myself. I will cut across the major roads and enter the marina area where all the restaurants are. This would cut out about 3/4 of a mile and possibly put me were the guys were at. I told myself if I saw them and were ahead of them, I would jog until they caught up and then try and stay with them. Sure enough it worked and I was in front. I began to jog slowly and I felt a lot better. By the time they reached me, I was almost good to go. This short experience has showed me that I need a few miles for my hip/groin to get warm and ready to go.

So now it was the 4 of us, running 6 min on/ 1 min off. It didn't hurt that bad as we continued down the ocean. Sure enough, there went mile 6, mile 7, mile 8. We were now heading down towards the Pennisula and things were going good. But we were running out of road!! We hit 8 1/2 miles and there really wasn't much left. For fun we did the last 1/4 mile along the jetty (sp?) jumping from rock to rock. Not good on my hip I might add, but still fun. HALF WAY DONE!

So we turned around and were back for more. Mile 9 / 10 I started feeling the heat as it was becoming a warm day. I had my 2nd GU and my hands were all sticky. With the sun beaming down, its not fun. We approached mile 10 and filled up on water and I washed my hands. And then we were off again.

Then next few miles weren't so bad. Some of us got bored listening to our music, while others zoned out and sang out loud. Some got stronger while others had to back off and stretch, then run to catch up. Everyone was feeling something. I wasn't too bad and considering how I felt in the beginning, I wasn't complaining! We hit mile 12 and were all happy that we only had 6 miles to go.

The next mile or two were a blur as I took my last GU for SUPER STRENGTH! Kevin was beginning to feel the pain and kept on stopping/stretching then running to catch up. He decided since he was too pooped that he would take the short cut I made up and recover. As the remaining 3 of us continued on our joruney to crazyland, I kept on thinking, I've done this final run so many times. We reached the last water station and filled up. Just under 3 1/2 miles to go. 40 minutes baby. FOUR-TEEE MINUTES!!

We all ran around the water and towards the Catalina Cruises to where I would have expected to find Kevin. But he wasn't there. That means he got lost or just kept on going. We curved around and were finally back on the bike path. That means 2 miles to go and we all saw the faint figure of Kevin in front of us. Within a 1/2 mile the 4 of us were back together again and feeling the pain. Drew and JC started going faster than myself and Kevin and were about 20 seconds in front of us. Then it looked like we all kept the same pace for the next mile. We approached the final 1/2 mile and I just put myself in the zone. Kevin said he needed to stop for a second and I continued. Drew was falling apart and looked like he hit his wall. I caught him with a 1/4 mile to go thinking maybe he wanted to finish with me, but instead saw that he just was trying to survive. I kept on going and then reached JC who decided to pick it up and finish with me. Unknown to me, Kevin was right behind me. I didn't have the energy to turn around though.

17+ miles completed. A New PR. Boy am I pooped. We all high fived, wobbled down the stairs and drank a gallon of gatorade each.

Thank god its only 14 miles next week. ONLY?

Sunday February 5th - 1/2 Marathon Race in Huntington Beach

I survived it. I was worried about my hip, but it didn't give me much trouble after the 2nd mile. Took mile 1 out in 9:54, which made me worried that since I haven't really run for 3 weeks, that it was too fast. The next few miles I set into a pace of about 10:30 I think, maybe a tad faster. Then I just got into my groove. I felt strong and my distance background I think really helped. At the halfway mark I felt really strong and started going faster and didn't even notice. Some how between mile 6 and 7 mile pacing dropped under 10 min miles. I was even strong going up hills passing people left and right. That pumped me up more and I worked those hills. Bad thing was I felt that pain as I reached each hill top, but recovered after about a minute. There weren't that many hills, but enough in one area. It was fun seeing friends pass me on the other side of the street and me to do the same. Some how even when I felt tired, my pace still stayed under 10 min miles.
Drew and I ran mile 1 together and then he took off. He ran his race with 6 mins running / 1 min walking the entire way but still buried me. But at mile 12 guess who I caught? So we basically ran the final mile together and totally pushed it. Definitely under 9 mins for that mile.
I finished the race unofficially by my watch at 2:11:24. If I figure that correctly, I think that is just :24 off of a 10min/mile pace! I sure negative split that race then because I know at 3 and 4 miles I was like at 31:30 and 41:44 or something like that. So if I repeat that for another 1/2 marathon, that puts me at about 4:22 for a marathon. With another month of training, I think that is possible. But who knows. Oprah is at 4:29. I do know that it will be difficult to repeat that pace another way through and therefore I won't be disappointed with my results. I have 3 goals here:

Goal #1 - Finish the Marathon....

Goal #2 - Finish under 5 hours

Goal #3 - Finish under 4:30...

So any of the above goals are fine, but Goal #3 would be awesome.