Monday, November 12, 2012

November 5-11: Half Marathon PR

Most of last week was dedicated to resting up and stretching out my legs for the Richmond Half Marathon on Saturday.


I knew that, barring illness, injury, or truly terrible execution, I was going to PR, and it was just a matter of how much. I’ll write up a full race report shortly, but all you need to know is that I met my A goal of sub-1:54, and that my old PR of 1:59:04 is history.



(According to the final, official, results, my time was 1:53:32. Same thing.)

Monday: Rest day, with about 3.5 miles of city walking to keep the legs loose, and a sports massage in the evening to prepare for the half marathon on Saturday.

Tuesday: 40 minutes of easy spinning on the bike trainer in the morning, 4000 yards of swimming with DCRP in the evening.

Wednesday: A 4.5 mile track workout, with 2.5 miles at “race pace” effort, which turned out to be 8:16/mile that day. That would be a 1:49 half marathon, which was not going to happen, so this was clearly done a little too fast.

Thursday: 3000 yards of very easy solo swimming in the morning. Lots of foam rolling and stretching at night.

Friday: A 2.5 mile shakeout run, with a mile at race pace effort in the middle. I brought no watch and did not care what my pace was, I was focused on enjoying running and containing the excitement of the PR that I knew would follow the next day; it was just a matter of executing the race to find out how much of a PR it would be.

Saturday: 13.1 miles of running at the Richmond Half Marathon in 1:53:32 (8:39 pace). Came back to DC and did 15 minutes of pool running and 1000 meters of swimming in the afternoon to loosen up the legs.

Sunday: Technically a rest day, but with my current car hanging together by a (rusty) thread and my new car not due to arrive in DC for another week, I hopped on my road bike for 15 miles to and from coaching in Arlington. Nice day for it, and a good chance to keep the legs moving.

9 comments:

  1. Awesome! Super-huge congrats on the PR! Can't wait to hear all about it.

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  2. I saw your tweet and was so happy for you! way to kick some alpaca butt!

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  3. Congrats on your amazing PR! How exciting!! Looking forward to hearing more about it!

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  4. Nice job! I ran the full and was on-target for a 4:00:00 marathon at the half, but then everything fell apart and I ended up walking a large portion of the second half. Glad you had a better experience!

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  5. I'm so happy for you and I hope you are a little less sore. I've found personally shaking out my legs after a race does so much more good, I want to try doing pool running afterwords sometime. You are the bomb!

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  6. Nice, PR Victoria! That's a ton of time to take off your PR! Congrats :)

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  7. Yeah! So pleased for you :D I always have to keep on going after whatever race I do otherwise I just seize up. Better to keep moving, particularly when you have other non-impact sports you're so good at.

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  8. Congrats again! I also must say how impressed I am that you went pool running and swimming the same day as a race! I usually stuff myself with a huge breakfast and spend the rest of the day on the couch.

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