Run For the Whales Half Marathon Training Run

Aloha!  As I mentioned in my last post, I have been spending the week in Maui with my family and a few friends.  Although this has been super relaxing and wonderful, it hasn't been the most conducive to marathon training.  I've found myself slipping into training apathy more and more each day.  I did, however, make time for an almost 60 mile week IF you count from my 19 mile run on Sunday to my 15 miles total today.  Not bad for vacation in Hawaii.  But I'm still feeling apathetic about my Boston goals.  Perhaps the "go get 'em" fire will come back to me once I get home.  If not, I'm not too terribly worried because 
Life
Is
Good...
with or without lofty marathon goals (I know, I know, a totally different tune than my "Like It's Your Job" post from a few weeks ago.  See what Hawaii will do to this fickle gal).  


Marathon Pace Training Run
Although some might disagree with Pfitzinger's training plans, he does call for several long runs with some miles at marathon pace.  I think this sounds all nice and dandy if you can do that sort of thing on your own.  However, I find myself needing a little push with these sorts of workouts.  A race setting is the perfect opportunity for me to hit my marathon pace without having to race all out.  If the race is at the right time and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, then I'm all about using races to help me with these marathon paced training runs.  So, today was a good day for that!  


Most of you on my Runninghood facebook page convinced me to get my lazy vacation bum out of bed at 4 a.m today to drive an hour south on Maui to run this Run For the Whales Half Marathon as my training run today.  I'm glad I did.  So, thank you to those of you that encouraged me.  I think I'd already made up my mind but it helped to have so many people agreeing.  It was a great end to a fabulous vacation! 


Goal
To use this half marathon as a way to get myself up early and make the most of my day while still fitting in a solid longer run with some at marathon pace.


What is Marathon Pace Amanda?
Not sure on this one.  I'd like to spout off some bad ass number like 7:15 but I know that isn't true.  7:20-7:25 even sounds too ambitious right now so 7:30 is a good number to shoot for.  I'd be happy with breaking 3:20 in the marathon so 7:30 would be better than this.  I'm sure I'll narrow my range down once this month is out but for now I've been thinking of MP as 7:20-7:30.  


Can you really just "run" a race?
Yes and No.  No, I couldn't just go out at an 8:30 pace for warm up but yes, I was able to keep myself close to marathon pace.  I was only supposed to do it for 8 of my miles but I kind of tried for the whole 13.1 except for a couple of miles closer to 8 min pace due to stopping for water and fuel (by choice) and just sucking arse on a hill.  

I begged an old lady to take my picture since I was all alone.  

Pros

• Beautiful course!
• Overall 3rd place woman and first in age group even though they took me out of the age group pool.  
• Um, I'm in Hawaii.
• Great bag, t-shirt, giveaways, etc.  
• Awesome age group ad overall awards.  I won several really cool things along with a Whale Tour for 2 that I'll be gifting to someone in Maui.  
• Opportunity to see more of Maui and still have my whole day.  
• A solid 13 mile run @ 7:36 avg including stops and getting lost.  

The Swag.  The bags are really great!  And the award bag for the winners were sweet!  I think I might be getting a Columbia bag and shoes in the mail too.  :)  

The note and shell from my girls were so special to have during my run while they all slept in the wee hours of the morning. 

The medals for winners were unique.  I like this.  

Cons

• Badly organized in my opinion.  They gave my number away, I couldn't figure out where to park in the dark early hours of the morning and missed my 4 mile warm up run.  
• The lead packs were directed in the wrong direction.  This totally stunk and it threw me off for the rest of the race.  I think this was close to mile 5 or 6??  
• I was really out of it for most of the race.  No plan.  Very wishy washy about what I would do.  Part of the way I thought I'd race it and then I decided to stick with the plan.  
• HILLY!  The profile course doesn't show how hilly it felt.  Perhaps I'm out of hill shape.  

This is the best my non-techie self could do right now to show you the elevation profile.  It doesn't do it justice.  :)

• They don't have definite times for us since we got lost.  They said to just take 3 minutes off of our times.  How official?? Not too concerned since this wasn't for a race time and certainly not for a PR.  I feel sorry for people who ran this for their first half marathon.  

Overall, I had a great time and am glad I did it. I'm trying to focus on all the positives instead of the parts that were less than stellar!  As you can see from my splits below, I ran a few of the miles too fast for marathon pace but the hills had something to do with that. With every uphill, there is a down hill.  The 8 min miles were from stopping to take a drink and fuel (cliff gels) and not stop my watch.  I didn't have 13.1 miles on my Garmin...only 13.0 or something but that was probably due to me stopping my watch when I got lost and kept running.  But out of the 13 miles I ran, I'm happy with hitting close to marathon pace on most of the miles.  Definitely not 100% confident that I could do this pace right now for 26.2. At least not today.  Maybe 20 miles but not a full marathon.  Good thing I have until April, right?  

1	7:25.9	1.00	7:26
2	7:11.9	1.00	7:12
3	7:36.6	1.00	7:37
4	7:30.2	1.00	7:30
5	7:47.3	1.00	7:47
6	7:16.4	1.00	7:16
7	7:21.8	1.00	7:22
8	7:41.4	1.00	7:41
9	8:05.1	1.00	8:05
10	7:31.2	1.00	7:31
11	7:36.3	1.00	7:36
12	8:07.6	1.00	8:08
13	7:30.7	1.00	7:31
14	:03.6	0.01	6:34

Way better way to recover than a stinking ice bath!!

This was a pretty sweet part of recovery too!

Happy Weekend Peeps! Excited to catch up with so many of you. 


Amanda