one month from now is the anniversary date of when i ran my first half marathon. it was in west palm beach, florida at the palm beaches marathon festival. it was quite a stepping stone in my life and quite an accomplishment. many of you who have seen all of my posts online last year have seen all of the workouts i posted in working up to it. that was a great moment. i had been running for about 15 months at the time. i had made a lot of improvement over that time and had enough confidence to try and run in a long distance event.
i had run several 5k races by that time. i skipped right passed running a 10k run to a half-marathon. i originally wanted to run a full marathon, but i had missed my window of time to properly train for one. undaunted, i did my research and found a program that could get me prepared to run the race. i was also able to find one that was relatively close by where i would be to run in. i allowed time in my busy touring schedule to adjust training weeks so that i didn't miss a day of running and go back a week or 2 because i had a show to move and a week off work traveling to montreal and then to home in texas. the timing worked out great. i was well prepared for the run and finished with a huge smile. i was a bit sore at the end, but recovered rather quickly.
this leads us to today. it's been almost a year since i've ran in a race, but i've stayed in shape the whole time. in my lead up to the hong kong marathon, i decided to run in the half-marathon event at the 30th macau international marathon. it fit almost perfectly into my training calendar as well. during week 8 i was scheduled to run the distance anyways. however, the race occurs during week 9. this is okay. i'm able to shuffle the weeks around to make the run fit into the training schedule. it'll take some juggling to get it, but i should be okay. the question is whether i go into this and try to set a PR or not. i think about this on every run i go on right now. right now, i just want to get in the race and just run and not worry about a PR. this course is no where near as flat as the palm beach course either. i cross a bridge twice which has quite an incline. if i'm looking at the map correctly, then there's quite a hill i have to climb at the end. so, those alone can cause me to slow down considerably. i'm not worried though. i feel like i'm running stronger than a year ago. i'm getting my mind right and staying focused on my pacing and trying to control myself to keep from starting to fast. this one should be a fun race. i've ran the distance before and am confident that i can have a good run. i'll need to save myself for the rest of my training. so, i'm not too worried about my time in this race. i would actually like to try to run a negative split. that's when you run the second half of the race faster than the first half. so, i'm practicing that on my mid-week semi long run. i've been running a hill nearby my usual route at least once a week as well.
so, i am 30 days away from racing after a year. see you at the finish line.
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