So as you know I completed the Iron Girl Half on 4/29/12 with a time of 2:10:10. I decided I was going to take it easy during the week and rested Mon & Tues. Did Yoga on Wed, ran less than 30 min on Thursday, rest Friday and Yoga on Saturday.
For the Frederick Running Festival, I had recruited my friend from work, Renee to run with me. Renee has been a runner for years, but never did much outside training. She did almost all her training on a treadmill with a few outside runs with me, but never past 5 miles. Renee was much more nervous than I was. We left for Frederick on Saturday around 3pm. I was not counting on getting any titanium girl merchandise since we were so late. We arrived and got our bibs, our jackets and checked out the pace group table. I wanted to run with a pace group again, and we signed up for the 2:10 group. Upon reaching the merchandise table I realized they actually still had some Titanium girl shirts, and was happy to score one. I also bought my second 13.1 car magnet! Yay! I bought a thing of glide, because I thought I forgot mine (found mine after the race on Sunday in my makeup bag) and checked out a few tables. Checked in with the iron girl table to obtain my bracelet so that picking up my medal would be easy. After leaving the expo we went to find our hotel. Settled in and began to look at the course map. I then realized that our hotel was smack dab at mile 1.5. Look out our window and sure enough see the porta potties that will be at the water station. I begin to get nervous because of road closures and tell Renee we are leaving at 6:00 on the dot. We venture out to Wal-Mart to get myself some gatorade and yarn to fix my iPhone holder (damn that scratchy velcro stuff) and Renee got everything in the store, including a door mat ;-). Across the street was a Ruby Tuesday's and we decide to eat there. Renee is a vegetarian, so she was happy to see the salad bar. I kept it light by having Tilapia, broccoli and mash potatoes. So yummy. We head back to the hotel at 8, and by 9 I am falling asleep.
Race Day! My alarm goes off at 5:30 and unlike most times I jump right up (something about race day makes me do this). Have my normal protein drink and get ready. We leave at 6:05 and luckily none of the roads have closed yet. We are able to score a spot on the fairgrounds and find a somewhat short line for the bathroom. By 6:40 we are at the start line and find the pace group guys. Immediatley something about one of them rubbed me the wrong way, but I figure what the hell, go with it. I quickly realized that I did not have as much energy as I did for Iron Girl, but attempted to stay with the group (and Renee). I began walking water stops, and up until about mile 7, Renee was with me. I fell behind and signaled for her to just keep going. We had talked before that we are there to run our race, and if one feels better than the other, to go ahead. No hard feelings! And we were going to meet at the beer table. Looking at my split times, mile 8-12 are my hardest. For FRF I was over 11:00 for all of them. This is something I need to focus on. I need to slow down in the beginning and let my body warm up. This is a new goal of mine. This time I actually saw the photographers and attempted to raise my arms and smile at a few. Hopefully they turn out better! In the end my time was 2:18:35, in my opinion, a very respectable time for having just done a half the weekend before. http://connect.garmin.com/splits/175396524
Two days later I am feeling pretty good. My hips are sore, but I am taking it easy. Marathon training will kick up soon and I need to make sure my body is ready!
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