Week 14 - Big D Half Marathon

Today I ran for the second time the Big D Half Marathon.  I did better by about four or five minutes better compared to last year's run, despite last year having better weather conditions.  I didn't mind the cool temps as I love running in temps between 50 and 65 degrees but it either threatened to rain throughout the race or it was a light drizzle.  The last 5 minutes of running were perhaps the worst in that it poured rain and made for a very cold finish.

It's a fairly hilly course (in my opinion) but it can be a very pretty run through a couple nice neighborhoods.  I think it lead to part of my running struggles later in the race as it caused me to expend more energy than I wanted.  I also didn't eat or drink anything before the race and so I bonked right around the 9 or 10 mile marker.  This just further reinforces that I must eat or drink something before each training run or race if I want to perform my best.

I really don't mind this race and would run it again.  They offer a full marathon course and if I ever decide to run a full marathon I would consider it.

Course

Elevation Chart

Up next - and 18 mile training run on Saturday!

Week 5 - Texas Half Marathon

So this morning I ran the Texas Half Marathon.  Temps were in the mid to low 30s, winds in excess of 10 mph.  Chance of rain.  Not ideal conditions for a run if you ask me.  Add in that I am currently fighting off a cold.  I still finished the race, all 12.6 miles.  If you're scratching your head wondering what happened to that last half mile, I'm wondering the same thing.

The course is relatively flat with only a few hills where you are running on the streets on the front half of the race.  Once I got close to the 6 mile marker we got onto the Champions Trail which is very flat.  The last time I ran on that trail was for the Wounded Warrior Half Marathon where it was raining, which resulted in portions of the trail being flooded.  Thankfully this wasn't the case this time around as I wanted to keep as much of me as possible dry so I don't get any worse off on dealing with this cold.  Before I got to mile 11 we got back onto neighborhood streets and finished the course.

There were parts of the course that were not a lot of fun to run as there was a bitter cold wind blowing into your face.  Running on the trail was nice as it seemed to be more protected and so you weren't always dealing with a stiff wind.

I can't say it's a bad course because of the weather and is a race I'd consider running again in the future.  The weather (namely the cold wind blowing in my face) is what made the race one of my less memorable races I have run.

I didn't finish with a time that I am the most happiest with (2:26:05) as I really wanted to finish with a time under 2:10.  I did still finish even with my cold slowing me down since I didn't want to get winded and then suffer a cough attack while on the course.  I am hopeful that I will eventually get over this cold and maybe can do much better when I have another race in a couple weeks -- The Cowtown Half Marathon.

For this race I tried out my new Garmin Forerunner 620.  It's a pretty sweet watch that tracks way more data points than my Garmin Forerunner 110 did.  Two things I really like about it was that it vibrates when you hit a lap and even with it having a touch screen you can swipe to other screens even while wearing gloves.  I'm working on a product review blog entry but I need a few more run before I can give a decent review.