This morning, Matt and I are flying south to Charleston, South Carolina for the weekend! As you guys know, we’ll be there to run the Charleston Half Marathon, for which we are being very kindly sponsored by my friends at Cabot (they will be at the race feeding the volunteers). You can see what we’re up to – and how the race goes – on Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook before I pop back in here with a recap next week. 🙂 It will be fun to have a little weekend getaway together!
So, what are my race goals? I’m going into the race with the aim of setting a new PR (personal record) and am planning to start out at my goal pace (under 7:54 minutes/mile) and just see how it feels. If it’s not my day, that’s okay and I’m not going to beat myself up about it – but I’m going to do my best to stay positive, enjoy the views, and hold on to that pace for dear life. 😉 Matt and I are planning to start together but have a friendly “every man for himself” plan in place – whichever of us feels stronger is welcome to charge on ahead and there will be no hard feelings. He crushed me at the GW Parkway Classic 10 Miler in April so I have a feeling he’ll be faster (he plays a lot of soccer, so it’s like doing speed workouts all the time), but we’ll see. 🙂
My current half marathon PR is STILL from the 2013 Nike Women’s Half Marathon here in DC. The course was flat, I had one of my best friends by my side, the weather was great, and I was trained fast – one of those magical running days. I finished in 1:43:44 and that record has stood ever since. I didn’t start trying to set a new half marathon PR until last year (the end of 2013 and the first part of 2014 I was doing full marathons – the Richmond Marathon and the LA Marathon, which crushed my shorter distance speed for awhile), when I joined my track group and started doing speed workouts and racing shorter distances again. In April, I would have set a new 10 miler PR at the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler but the course was short (I’m going to count it anyway!). In June, at the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, I gave it my all but the crazy hilly course got the best of me. I was still really pumped about my time, though – I finished in 1:46:09 — 8:06 min/mile pace – which was my second fastest half marathon ever. I went on to set new 10k PRs twice this year – first at the hot and hilly Beach to Beacon 10k in August and then the next month at the Clarendon Day 10k in September with Matt.
I’ve been wanting to do a flat half marathon to see how I can do without the hills, which always throw off my pacing, so when the opportunity to do Charleston – which is apparently SUPER flat – came up, I was all about it. Despite skipping a couple weeks of track workouts over the holidays, I’ve been running a lot and feel relatively well trained – so we’ll see. 🙂
I worked from home yesterday and in the afternoon I took a nice running break with my high school best buddy Jenny. It was SO nice out randomly (mid 50’s and sunny) and felt amazing to be out there! Perfect shake out run before the weekend.
Jenny said she wanted me to challenge her to run a little faster than usual for this one, so we did! We ran a REALLY hilly 4 mile route and got her pace down from the usual 10 minute miles to a 9:16 average. One mile was even just under 9! I was super proud of her. 🙂 You’re faster than you think, Jenny!
Stats:
Wish the weather would be like that all winter!
Hoping for good weather in Charleston for the race tomorrow, too! Wish us luck – I’ll see you guys next week! 🙂
Any restaurant or sightseeing/things to do recommendations for Charleston? We won’t have a car and are staying in the historic downtown area – although we could rent a car for a day if there are really awesome things to see nearby. 🙂 Hoping for good weather!
