Monday: Run 1 miles, 1 hour of RIPPED
Tuesday: Run 8 miles, Xfit Lower Body/Cardio
Wednsday: Surf, Run 2 miles, Xfit Core
Thursday: Run 6 miles Xfit Upper Body
Friday: Surf. Run 1 mile
Saturday: Run 1 mile
Sunday: Run 17 miles, Surf
Anyway, I was concerned about how all this working out would affect my race and for that reason I ended up skipping a surf sesh on Saturday and instead sat at the beach and watched waves.
Anyhow, I am much stronger than last year, my body is much leaner, and I am running faster with a better pace, but as a whole, my volume of running miles is much lower than last year and I am not sure how that is going to affect me over 26.2. I can't decide how I am going to train the next few weeks as the Marathon gets closer. I would love to keep up the cross training but I know I also need to run more long runs. My new life as a single mom makes it hard to run on the weekends when I have the kids so I am going to figure something out.
But back to the race. I took the day off on Saturday and spent time chilling, relaxing, slowing down, and setting goals at Alii Beach where I always escape to when I need peace. I was hoping that taking the day off from crazy would enable me to run a great race, but of course I also had my doubts. I ate what I needed to eat, drank what I needed to drink and tried to get a good night's sleep for the 3 am wake up call. Everything went well and I made it to the race with lots of time to spare. My game plan for the race was to run a 9 minute mile for as long as I could. This has been my game plan all year and I have been able to follow it pretty well with no problems except for the Hickam Half Marathon when I had a rough day of surfing the day before.
The race started and I took off at an 8:45 pace. I felt comfortable at the pace but didn't want to push any harder because I knew that a lot of hills were to be had in the 2nd half of the race. I cruised along and reminded myself to stay focused which is always a problem for me. I tend to get lost in my thoughts and forget that I am reaching. I handled all of the rolling inclines and was happy to hit my 5k mark of 26 minutes and 10K mark of 52 minutes. As I neared the huge hill by Kalaheo I told myself that I was doing good and would let myself run up the hill at a 10:30 pace. I was able to run it faster than that and made up time on the down hill. The next few miles were rough on me as they are rolling turning inclines which I don't do well on, however, the worst part of my race was the last 3 miles which were all flat. Flat miles are always my slowest because I don't know how to push the pace on these. My legs were a little tired by the end of the race and although I finished strong I know I can finish much stronger than I did.
When it was all over I ended up with a 3rd place finish in my age group which I was very proud of as it was my first placing in any of these series races. Happy day!!
After the race I had a nice breakfast with friends and then went to surf Waikiki with Cathy. Happily for me it ended up being the best ever surf sesh I have had to date. I caught a lot of waves and rode them in nice and long.
It was a great day!
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