Half marathon number seven is now complete. It wasn’t my best, but wasn’t my worst either. And I have now successfully completed Disney’s Coast to Coast challenge (run a half or full in Florida and a half in California in the same calendar year).
Disney races are always hard for me. Why? Because I don’t get the proper rest before the race. Sure, I do my best to taper, but then I arrive at the parks and I want to do things! I’m usually good the day before the race, but two days before tends to be quite busy. Lots of walking and way too much time on my feet. This never bodes well for a good race.
That said, my second best half time was one year ago at this race. I think that was because it was my first half and I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to finish. So I sped through that one, and went through a range of emotions and pains.
This race, the goal was to finish. We stopped for a few picture opportunities as well, which I will add to the blog at some point. I ran it with my sister and it was our first race together. She is clearly going to be a much faster runner than I am.
I am not sure what has been going on with my training. I I’ll say my cross training has fallen off a bit and I wonder if that’s the problem. I knew this race wouldn’t be great, as my last few weeks of training have been a serious struggle. It could also be because I have gained a bunch of weight over the past few months. I am not sure why, but it is something I would like to fix. Unfortunately, this is the start of fall racing season, so it might be tough. I think for my next races, I may actually cut back on the running and run 3 days a week instead of four (frequently at 4th day was under 3 miles anyway) and try to add in some weight work and more cross training. Maybe it will help with the running, maybe not, but it might help with the weight, which should, in turn, help with the running, right?
All in all, it was a great weekend. Finished a race, saw a bunch of friends I never see, and I got to meet Jeff Galloway thanks to the generosity of runDisney (more on that later). And I got two shiny medals. Gotta love the bling.