Patrick Henry Half Marathon

The only good thing about my race

Chewing on a dry bagel after the race

Disappointed!

Almost to the finish line after I passed where Becka was standing

Coming toward Becka near the finish line

Pinning on my number before the race - It was still dark

Stretching before the race

I have been running a tremendous amount the past few months. I'm training for another marathon (26.2 miles). I've run 3 up to this point, but I want to break 3 hours. My best time was in my last marathon in 2005, which was 3:21:00 in Indianapolis. I'm about half way through actual marathon training now. I figured it out and since I started running heavily again in February (when the weather broke) I have run about 630 miles, and adding about 35 - 40 per week.

I just ran a half marathon in Hanover County where Patrick Henry lived for many years. Sad to say, I really didn't have a good race. I set out to get 1:25:00 and ended up with 1:33:55. Mile 5 was all uphill and I started the first four miles WAY too fast. I was runing around 6 minute miles. The hill killed me, even though I have been training heavily on hills out here, and I couldn't get my rhythm back for the rest of the race. I do have somewhat of an excuse. The humidity was 93%. It was awful. You can probably tell by the pictures, but I was absolutely soaked by the end of the race. This has happened several times in practice runs, by the way, but I was so soaking wet that by mile 10 my shoes sounded like I had just run through several foot-deep puddles. I was sloshing around in them - very uncomfortable. You can tell by the pictures that I was dying and that I wasn't happy with my performance.

I was very disappointed but I got back out there on Monday to hit it again, and today, one week later, I punished myself with a huge 1.6 mile hill at mile 8 on my 14.1 mile run this morning. I did a lot of hills, in fact. And, I felt much better because even after all of that, I was only 10 seconds per mile slower than my race pace last week. I am posting some pictures that Becka took last week, but I am also posting a link to the photography website that actually did race photos. You can click here to see them. I did get a technical race shirt out of the whole deal!