Silver Strand 5 Minutes Faster

I PR'd at Silver Strand.  Runner's lingo for setting a personal record. Which is great.  2 minutes faster than my last half marathon.  And 5 minutes faster than when I did the same half marathon 2 years ago. So by mile I ran the race at a 10:10 pace and 2 years ago at a 10:35 pace. It seems like such a small difference; 25 seconds per mile faster.  But man is that hard.  I ran as hard as I could the whole race.  I spent a lot of time looking down at my watch checking my pace.  And at the end I felt a bit nauseated.  All for 5 minutes.  Have I mentioned that this running thing is hard?  Not that I am complaining.  I had a good time.  And I actually ran close to 16 miles this race as my coach had me run for 20 minutes before the race and then 20 minutes after.  Though I was so wasted by the end of the race that I only ran about 13 minutes after the race.  Really I hobbled for 13 minutes after the race.

The starting line n Coronado

Before each race they have the National Anthem

One amazing thing about this race compared to other half marathons I have done is that 2 days later I ran 5 miles, the next day 4 miles and the next day 7 miles.  All with no issues or pain or soreness. (well almost- my right big toe still hurts a bit).  It is exciting to see improvement and to develop strength and endurance I never knew I had. That is probably what this is all about.  I like pursuing a goal.  Right now it is a physical goal.  And I love having a coach take away the mystery of the process and just lay it out for me.  It was the same with pursuing a medical degree.  Just do this and do that and you will get there.  (with just a bit of work, of course).

I run with my hands open like that. It looks funny.

Here are some interesting statistics from Runner's World in 2012.  I like the first statistic the best. If I actually accomplish this thing, and that is still an unknown, it will be pretty cool to be in that 0.5% group.

Marathon Statistics
Percent of the U.S. population that has run a marathon	0.5 %
Record time for the fastest marathon ever run	2:03.59 hours
Total number of U.S. marathons held annually	570
Total number of people who finished a marathon in 2011	551,811
Average amount of people who finished an individual marathon in 2011	171
Total percent of people who finished in a top 10 marathon in U.S. and Canada	37%
Total percent of decrease in marathon runners in 2011	45%
Total number of marathons ran on May 1st, 2011	24
Total number of marathons ran on October 16th, 2011	23
Total fee the for the New York City marathon	$255
Average cost to run a marathon	$67
Number of marathons that cost over $100 to enter	41
Average number of sneakers a marathon runner goes through during training	2
Average number of calories a woman burns during a marathon	2,880
Number of miles in a marathon	26.2 miles
Average amount of time per mile for the fastest marathon ran	5:10 minutes
Average number of miles ran per week during marathon training	40 miles

Tomorrow I will be doing a training run called Yasso's 800s. First I will do a 20 minute warm up and then I will do 8 rounds of 800 meters at a 9:04 pace (ouch, that is fast for me!) In between each 800 meters (2 laps around the track) I will jog or even walk 800 meters as, per my coach, I need to be fully rested between each fast round.  Then at the end I'll run another 20 minutes of a warm down.  I'm looking forward to doing it.

The guy behind me with the pack on played his music out loud and it bugged me but I ran ahead of him.

Then we are off to the desert for a few days for a little vacation.  I'll be running out there too, of course.  Hopefully I can find a safe place to run.  I need to run 100 minutes on Sunday and 70 minutes on Tuesday.  I get freaked out in the desert when I get too far away from camp.  But I am sure I'll figure something out.

Greeted by my favorite fan right before the Finish Line

Thanksgiving is almost here and I am super excited. It is going to be a different celebration this year.  More on that to come.

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