Half or Full Marathon?

I know you are tired of hearing about my running, I just posted about it.  But I can’t stop thinking about this opportunity and really want some help deciding!  Here’s my dilemma:

I found a race In Colorado on Labor Day (which is in 6 1/2 weeks) that has both a half marathon and a full marathon. Which should I do?

Half Marathon Pros:

• I know I can do the distance without injury
• I can try to break 1:50!

Half Marathon Cons:

• the race is up hill the first half and then down the 2nd… might make it hard to get a PR
• They have pacer runners (which is way cool!) but they don’t have a pacer at my goal of 1:50, just at 2 hours or 1:45

Marathon Pros:

• I am already in shape and could get my mileage high enough to do it in 6 weeks
• It would be really cool to complete a marathon!
• The marathon is all at a slight down hill
• They have a pacer at the time my goal would be, 4 hours, so I could just stick with them
• We want to have more children and I will likely be pregnant sometime next year making it at least 2 and probably more like 3 years until I’d be able to run another marathon, now may be the time!

Marathon Cons:

• Risk of INJURY is high, and could be long lasting
• People usually train for 16 weeks for a marathon, and I would only have 6, BUT I am very close to on track since I just trained for a half marathon

What do you think?  Any advice?  Anyone out there done this before?  I’m putting up a poll. Please help me decide!

South Jordan Half Marathon 7/10/10

I ran my first half marathon (13.1 miles) the morning after we arrived in Utah for a family reunion.  I had planned to run one here in Denver but couldn’t find one on a Saturday this summer while we are in town.  So I just found one in Utah, conveniently while we were there, on a Saturday AND in my home town!

I felt less nervous for this race than others because (1) I had trained well, (2) it’s a longer race so I didn’t feel so much pressure to be so darn fast, and mostly because (3) I had ran the course previous to the race.  I woke up at 4:45 and got to the start line WELL before dawn.  I was the 2nd racer to arrive.  I knew it was a small race (their 1st year) but… c’mon!  More people came but I think there were only 115 runners.

Dan and the girls woke up and found me around mile 10 to cheer me on.  It meant a lot to me, sort of teared up when I saw them, good thing I was wearing sun glasses so no one could see. :)  Check out their cute bed heads and jammies in the picture below.

I met my primary goal of under 2 hours but not my secondary goal of under 1:50.  That’s okay, I feel really good about my race.  I ran hard and at a pretty even pace the whole time.  I had energy left to sprint the last 100 meters and no injuries!  It’s a really hilly race and I think I will try a flatter course and maybe break 1:50 next time.  My biggest excuse for my time is that they didn’t have mile markers on the course!  I did have my nike+ chip that talks to my ipod and tells me distance, time and pace but I forgot my ipod and used Dan’s and it gave me inaccurate readings so I thought I was going faster than I was.  According to his itouch I finished in under 1:50 (it said I was done like half a mile early) I may have been closer to my goal had I not relied on that bad information.  But no biggie!  Like I said, I am happy with my performance.  The nice thing about the first time you do a race, anything is a PR!

In a small race like this my places look so much better than the Boulder Bolder!  I got 5th overall and 2nd in my age division, made me feel pretty darn special.  I am tempted to do a full marathon but am scared of injury so I think I’ll stick to half marathons for now.  I’d really like to do another half this summer but I can’t find one!  What is it with Denver and races on Sundays only?  Geez.  Hello Denver?  Sunday CHURCH, you ever heard of it?!?!?

I can go the distance!

I ran 16 miles yesterday morning so now I know I can go the distance for my half marathon (13.1 miles) coming up.  I am pretty proud, never ran that far before!  I feel such a sense of accomplishment.  I have a big blister on my foot and a few aches this morning but it felt good.  The first 13 miles took me 1 hour 54 min.  My primary goal at the race next month is under 2 hours my secondary goal is 1 hour 50 min or less.  Seems reasonable I think, since I did it yesterday in nearly that with 3 miles tacked on the end, but I’ll try not to get my hopes up.  I’ve come to realize that I am a terrible racer.  I often have training runs faster than my races.  I was always a bad tester in school, I guess this is similar. 

I think it’s amazing what our bodies can do!  And to think, all you marathoners have gone a full 10 miles further than I did!! I took a couple pictures in the bathroom mirror after I got back because I found it humorous how very sweaty my shirt was, on second thought, that’s gross, I’ll just keep them to myself.  What’s the furthest you’ve run (or walked, biked etc.)?  Don’t be shy, be proud, I’m curious.

Bolder Boulder

 

5 am the morning we planned to move all our “big stuff” (furniture) over to the new place I woke up and had Dan drop me off at the bus stop.  I took the special “RUN RIDE” bus up to Boulder for my race.  I felt pretty lame leaving when I other people were coming over to help us move our stuff.  But truly, I am not very strong and never do the heavy lifting anyway… still felt lame though.  This goes to show you just how bad I wanted to do this race again!  I had no running friends with me (last year I had 4, plus Dan and the girls) but I enjoyed the scenery as I rode up to Boulder and tried to calm my nerves.

I trained pretty hard for this race.  I followed a Nike plus training program I got from my ipod application, I had done runs up to 10 miles in length and many tempo runs, sprints, and strides.  I felt really prepared.  The bus was late an I got to the start line only minutes before my wave was leaving, so I jogged up to meet my group in the DA wave.  I didn’t really feel ready when the gun shot and we all started running.  I felt fine during the race, I did a much better job this year conserving energy.  I didn’t go out too fast and did ok at maintaining my speed, although it tapered off towards the end.  I ended up with a time of 52:34 which is slower than last year by 17 seconds.  I am disappointed but that’s ok, I still had fun.

I’m embarrassed I didn’t perform better, especially with all the hassle of me racing on our moving day.  Like I said, I trained really well (better than last year for sure, when I hadn’t even ran the distance before the race).  The only thing I can think of is that about 2 weeks before the race I donated blood.  I didn’t think twice about it affecting my running.  But when I went out to run 7 miles the next morning I felt really light headed.  I completed my run but had a really hard time maintaining the pace I had been doing for months.  After that run I went home and did some research.  I found that professional athletes are often discouraged from donating by their coaches because of the decrease in performance.  In fact, some athletes have put in extra blood before an important event to increase their performance (it’s illegal).  Apparently when you donate blood you are robbed of hemoglobin containing red blood cells that deliver oxygen to your muscles, which makes you perform poorly until they have restored.  I read that your hydration is back up to normal after a couple days but your red blood cells take 2 months to replenish.  That seems like so long!  I am NO doctor and I don’t know if any of this is true but… it’s my excuse.  I just haven’t felt good running since my donation, and it takes way more effort than it did to maintain a faster pace. I wonder if it effected me so much because of my size.  I barely weighed enough to qualify to donate but they take the same about of blood from every donor, so the percentage of blood taken for me was higher.  Has anyone ever heard of this?  Is it all in my head? 

I hope I feel back to where I was soon, because I plan to do my first 1/2 marathon in 5 weeks.  Sorry no pictures, I didn’t want to carry a camera with me during the race (although I saw some people who did) but if you REALLY want to see me racing (mom) you can go here to see the ones they took of me.  I tried to copy them here, but they have them protected so I cannot.

signed up today

Even though we are moving the day of the race, Dan told me to go for it. So I have to run really fast and get home to help with the move. Feeling pretty selfish right now, but hey, I've been planning on this for a year now! Crossing my legs just thinking about it. Remember last year?

pioneer day

My Utah visit post saga continues...

Dan, Joni and I ran a 10k (6.2 miles) in Orem on the 24th.  We were sad that both Matt and Jack who registered were unable to participate due to injuries!  But the rest of us had good time climbing "Goliath" (remember we're in OREM... hence the scriptural reference).  Goliath was a hill that gained over 500 ft in elevation over about a mile!  Yeah, it was crazy hard, way steep and way long!!  But after that the rest of the race was basically down hill.  I passed a lot on the hill because I had trained a lot for that I was prepared... what I didn't train for was all the DOWNHILL.  You'd think that would be easy right?  I struggled, I guess it uses different muscles I hadn't trained much.  Anyway, here are our times:  Joni finished in 48:32 (3rd place), Dan in 51:00, and Jessica 51:07 (2nd place, by ONE SECOND).

I was ahead of Dan the whole race until he passed me right before the finish line, the stinker!  It was really my fault though.  My legs were shot and I was a baby and walked from like the 5.5 mile point to the 6 mile, that's when he caught me.  My consolation was being so SORE I couldn't go up or down stairs for 3 days, so I knew I had pushed myself hard.  Sorry, I could talk about running forever... I'll stop now. :)

    

My parents were kind enough to watch our girls while Dan and I took much needed showers.  So I missed the playground's maiden voyage... check this thing out!!  My dad MADE this himself with no plans or help of any kind, impressive eh?  Sophie loved it.

That evening we went to a Chapman family Luau in my in-law's gorgeous backyard.  We had good food followed by dancing and a limbo.  It was so fun to see family we don't see often enough!  Had to throw in the picture of Tom with his burnt zucchini, that was too funny.  He put it in the oven to keep it warm before dinner and we didn't find it until the party was over and the food was burned onto the pan.

 

I did it!

As you can see Tessa brought her game face! And I was psyched too, totally pumped, I had butterflies and terrible race jitters for days preceding the race and it all came to a head yesterday morning.

Here's the (boring) play by play: Got up at 5:15 got everyone ready to go and left to the bus station just before 6:00. Boarded a bus (they have special shuttles that go straight to the start line) that left at 6:20. Traffic was pretty bad and we didn't arrive until 7:40 our start wave was supposed to leave at 7:49 and there were about 10,000 people and 2 blocks between us and the start line! I made a bad choice and drank a bottle of water on the bus and needed to use the facilities (which were nasty port-a-potties with a line a mile long to use) so I opted for holding it... another bad choice. We said goodbye to our supportive husbands and jogged up to the line (well as close as we could get) but still missed our wave... no big deal we have our own timing chips so it was ok, the gun shot in the air and we were off! I felt awesome that first mile, we were in a slow start wave so we just shot past people like crazy my adrenaline was pumping and let it carry me, I did a 7:27 the first mile. After having past so many people (literally 1,000's) I thought we'd be kind of out in front soon but there seemed to be an endless flow. That was probably the most difficult part of the race was having to wait for people and look for holes to pass because it was seriously packed! Not a good race for the claustrophobic. On the other hand it made me feel SO FAST to be passing so many and not being passed by anyone, I only got passed by maybe 3 people the whole race. The problem with that was that I felt like I was going faster than I actually was and I slowed down every mile to the end. But there's another reason for that... so remember how I mentioned about drinking too much water on the bus? Well the need to go started hitting me hard as I descended a hill in mile 3 there were some port-a-potties but I didn't think it was worth it to stop seeing as I aaaa.... well.... ummmm... had already "leaked" a bit. I won't disgust you any further but I'll just say that it was bad and definitely made me hold back the rest of the race not wanting to run too fast and loose it all. Gross I know. But I figure probably only like 3 people are going to read this HUGE paragraph anyway and they probably really love me and won't disown me for wetting my pants. Anyway, I continued on at a slower pace to the finish line not feeling very fatigued and feeling very embarrassed. My time was 52:17 (8:27 mile pace). Not thrilled about it but pleased considering I only trained for 2 months. I'll do better next year for sure! We ran together a bit but all finished on our own.

Let me explain a few of the pictures: in the big one it's Angi, me, Susan, Emily, and Jill. We're all friends who know each other from church. The crooked one on the side is on the way home when everyone feel asleep, my face is supposed to say, "who's the one who just ran a race?!?" Sophie was cranky when I finished (hence the kiss picture) but was all smiles when we got her a popsicle. Oh and Tessa's game face is caused by her new teeth coming in, she pulls some funny ones!

All in all it was a good race and I'm so glad I did it. And I definitely plan on doing it next year! Here are some fun facts about the BolderBoulder 10k:

• it's the 2nd biggest race in the US
• 5th biggest in the world
• over 50,000 runners and 150,000 spectators (at least)
• it's at 5,300 feet making it an altitude challenge as well
• it's 31 years running

Oh and I think it's funny to hear my places since they are so ridiculous in a big race like this: I was 6,722th overall; 1,618th (out of 26,182) women; and 66th out of 728 in my division. If my math's right, that puts me in the top 9% of my division... that sounds better. :)

Who's going to do it with me next year?