St. Michaels Half Recap

When I started training for this race 12 weeks ago, I chose to do Hal Higdon's intermediate training program. I'd used his programs in the past and really liked them. But this time, I really wanted to do better. Faster. And by faster, I wanted to finish in under two hours.

But two hours?! Eek! That's fast, and I'm not fast. I've got endurance, sure, but not speed. I knew I'd have to take training seriously. So I did the pace runs. I did the tempo runs. I did the interval training. I did the strength training (yes, with real hand weights.) And I did the long runs. So come last Saturday morning, I knew I really had done all I could. While I knew my goal was do it in under two hours, mostly my goal was to run as hard as I could for the 13.1 miles and hope it was enough.

AND I DID IT! I'll be honest: it was wicked hard. I started getting really tired around mile 10.5. And at mile 12, I really really really wanted to walk. But because I had my watch, I knew I had zero time to spare. So I kept going. My final time? 1:58:57, with mile splits of 9:05. Chuck joked that I could have sat down on a bench for 60 seconds. Um, no. But I did it. It was crazy hard, but I did it.

Other than the hardness of the race, it was a super fun weekend. I went out there with three other women from church. We got a break from our families and enjoyed the beautiful small town of St. Michaels. We had perfect weather. I had perfect company. The only imperfect thing about the weekend was when the hotel water source started delivering sandy water in the pipes. But otherwise, it was such a good time. We've already recruited two others to join us next year.

Immediately after the race.




At the BBQ party. We clean up nicely, don't we?