Left from Seattle early Thursday morning for New Orleans to get away from the grey skies of BC winter, but mostly for a running race that had been marked on the calender for close to a year. The weather was great and the rest of the trip did not disappoint either, from bourbon street, the quarter, the hotel and most importantly the race.
Great morning for a long run...
I used a 16 week program mashed together with an ironman program that I used last year for the race back in August. At about week 12 of the running program, I figured it was extremely aggressive and extremely unrealistic. This was a pretty good example of finding something on the internet, and figuring out it probably is made by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Track workouts seemed good but build up times and half marathon goal times were a little insane. ( 2-3 minutes faster then what I thought was inline with a sub 3 hour training program.)
Started out with a long sleeve running shirt, then layered down. It was getting hot out. Think it might have gotten to 18ish.
After finishing up a half marathon three weeks before with a time 1:24.5, I figured I had more then enough speed to get under that 3 hour mark. (program was look for a 1:22 or better.) The only thing I was really worried about was if the travel would mess me up. A 2 hour time difference didn’t seem to matter and after getting to the hotel, I felt pretty good other then tired of travel. Saturday morning I got up first thing and headed down to the gym for a quick 20 minute run to loosen up the legs, and then a group of us headed down to pick up our running chips for Sunday morning. After walking the mile long convention center, we got our gear and wondered out of the crazy huge Brooks display. All things set and everything was ready to go.
7 am start with the sun beaming out, and thousands of people walking to the start. I think they cap out at 17,000 and about 14,000 raced with 3,200ish doing the full distance. Got there just in time for the start and away we went. First mile was congested but then I was settling in and after 5 miles we separated from the halfers. I thought the course was great, minus the pot holes. You really had to look down a some parts, almost felt like a trail run. As the race went on, I felt pretty good and was getting my target splits. At about mile 20-23, things still felt good, but could tell I forgot about how hard the old mental game comes into play on the last 5-10 kms. Fought through and came in felling pretty relaxed and got the goal time of 2:58. I can tell I still have room for improvement but was happy with the result.
did a 41 minute 10km, and my half split was 1:27, so I think I held on pretty good. Just need to keep getting the speed going.
I’ll add City pictures later on in the week. Great weekend, and thanks Darryl for letting me use your watch, saw mine sitting at the front door when I got home. ba.
