I don't know if I am completely healed from my injury or not. Sometimes I can still feel slight strains of pain in my leg. My plan for spring and summer was to just take it easy. I wasn't going to sign up for ANY races this summer, not even a local 5K just for fun. My Big race that I actually want to do well at would not be until October when I run the Tower of Terror. After that I will be running the Rock n Roll Half in Las Vegas and that's all about fun with family ( I don't really care what my time will be).
With that being said, I was kind of sad that I wouldn't be participating in Rock n Roll VA Beach this year, but every day this summer when I would go out for my very hot runs, I was thankful that I wouldn't be going because I remembered how hot it was last year.
But THEN Lacey had the great idea that we should sign up and run it. I told her for sure that I would not be doing the half marathon even though she said that she would run with me at my pace. I still told her "No". I was following the Galloway plan and by August 31 my longest run would only be up to 9 miles. ( For those of you who don't know, I have run 13.1 miles several times but I became severely injured after the Princess Half Marathon this February so I am started my training plan from scratch). I told her that I didn't want to run this race and end up bringing some of my injury back. I wanted to be strong for TOT in October. So anyway, after a bit of sister peer pressure I told her that I would consider the 5k or the Half Marathon relay if I could find a partner.
I'm sure many of you have seen us soliciting on Social media to find a partner for me. As luck would have it, one of our readers volunteered.
So me and my new partner started to plan our weekend and come up with a strategy for the relay.
But then something happened. Competitor group came out with this deal: Run the beach run and the half marathon and it was only $75 and you get a ton of swag. We both figured it out and it would cost us less to do both the beach race and the half marathon then it would for each of us to just do the relay. Plus if we did the bundle we would walk away with 3 shiny new medals. So in the spur of the moment we both signed up for the half marathon ( instead of doing the relay as planned).
I'm not gonna lie, I am a bit nervous about running this race and here is why.
1. I know it's going to be SO hot. 13.1 miles in the heat makes me question WHY I am doing this?
2. I shouldn't be running 13.1 miles when my training plan only calls for 9. Is this just asking for a disaster? This is one of the reasons that I wanted to start adjusting my Goofy Training plan to allow for some longer runs.
So this is our plan. Even though I am no longer running the relay, the partner I had found and I are still going to try to run most of this race ( if not all of it) together ( She's training for the WDW marathon too and I think she's doing the same training plan that I am).
We are NOT doing this race for time.
We will probably run the first 9 miles just like we would for a training run and then the last few miles we will be taking it very slow and taking lots of walking breaks. There is really no need to push ourselves during this race. Should we have just stuck with running the relay? Yea, probably. But hey, as long as we don't push it, I think we will be okay, right? Plus, having someone to run with you and motivate you for 13 miles has got to be better than running half that distance on your own, right? That's what I am going to keep telling myself anyway.
And, I figure Now that I will be running 2 Rock n Roll Series races, I qualify for the Heavy Medal medal, not that that was ever a deciding factor or anything. Really I could care less. I think it would be more special if it was given to me after completing the second race but I recently found out that it gets mailed to you.
So I know many of you who are running RnR VA Beach at the end of the month. After you are done running your race and getting your refreshments, will you come back to the finish and cheer for me? ~M
Have you ever ran a race knowing that you need to hold yourself back? Tell me What's on your mind?