Wine and Dine Recap

Now that I've had a week and a half to think about the Wine and Dine half marathon I'm ready to recap the race.

First, as per usual, I had a really good time.  Races are fun.  As I've said before I enjoy races because the attitudes are infectious; everyone who's there wants to be there.

Jenn and I got into Orlando on Friday night and spent most of Saturday enjoying the expo, lunching with her family, and trying to take naps since the race was a night run.  Overall the race was a lot of fun.  I started strong but like the Disney Princess, it was really frustrating to get around people who were going slower.  I would be running at a good pace behind someone and they would just stop in the middle of the path to walk.  If a runner needs to walk that is fine.  I walk.  But I jog to the side of the path before I stop running so not to get in another runner's way.  That's a consequence of being a huge race, there is just no room to maneuver.

I held up really strongly until mile 8 or so.  After that my legs felt like lead.  I needed more and more walking breaks and started shuffling.  My goal was to finish in under 3 hours, knowing that if I maintained a 13 minute   mile average I could finish in a bit less than 2 hours and 53 minutes.  

I finished in 3 hours and 31 seconds.  So close to my goal.  I know that if I had just taken fewer walking breaks I could have at least met my original goal.  I'm not surprised that my legs struggled after mile 8 though.  I never trained farther than 9 on my longer runs and I only did that once.  In order to get ready for the Disney Princess race I want to adjust my training significantly differently.  More about that later.