half recovery

Okay, I won't keep you in suspense - yesterday Spaghetti and I totally rocked the half! We made my goal of 2:15 (well, technically I was 2:15:51 but I'm rounding down dammit) and didn't pass out or die or anything! No injuries either, that is key.

Overall the race was pretty good. Temperature a cool but humid 67 degrees, it was nice and overcast so as to not add to the heat, and a bit of a rainstorm came down from mile six through eight which was rather refreshing - save my desperate attempt to hide my ipod down my pants as I did not have the waterproof ipod armband with me. Even though I had bike shorts on they were not tight enough to keep the ipod at my waist so it kept sliding down. Quite awkward, really. Three miles of me pulling, tugging, and holding onto a bulge in my pants. Lesson learned.

For me the park was cake. I have been training all my long runs there, so I felt really powerful on the hills. But once we got to the straightaway I lost it! In looking towards the race I was sure that this would be the easiest part, no hills and a slight downward elevation. Yet I just lost my power and kept getting slower. So now as I continue on my marathon training bit I need to figure out if my last leg power loss came from any of the following:

Not running enough distance the week before (I had dropped down to 10 miles from 13 miles the previous week)

Hydration issues

Food consumption the day before

Tempo running on straightaways

Pacing issues - going out too fast and burning out early

Good thing I have two more months to figure these out, eh?

On the kooky side, it took me an extraordinarily long time to recover from the race. Post race I showered and hung at Spaghetti's place with her, La La La and Marathon Man. (Marathon Man was like the 350th finisher out of 12,000 and a 6:20 pace. Oh. My. God.) After a little pasta salad I headed home, putzed around and went to bed.

At 5:00 pm.

I woke up for a bit from 10:30 to 11:30, but otherwise slept until 7:30 this morning. At which point I still was pretty darn tired. Is that normal? Should I really be that exhausted from a long race? Normally I nap after my long runs, but I haven't really tracked the cumulative time.

As a test I am going to start juicing again, I haven't been and I'm wondering if maybe the boost of natural vitamins will do the trick. Must outsmart my body as it hates me, I can do it!