Just over a month and I'm finally getting back to posting. I've been a little busy at work lately and at home so I just haven't thought about posting to be honest. To catch ya'll up:
On Oct. 30th I ran my first half marathon. It's probably going to be my first and last. I had trained before the race somewhat running 7 miles two weeks before and 10 miles a week before the race. I thought I was ready...and boy was I wrong. It started out easy enough, I was following my plan and my legs and breathing were in sync. I wanted to run the entire 13.1 miles in less than 2 hours. That equates to just over 9 minute miles. It also makes the math easy in your head while you are running. I don't have a fancy dancy GPS watch so I just had to do the multiplication in my head. So I started at around 8:30 miles. It sounds slow but a brisk pace for me for this distance. I was able to hold that pace for about 6 or 7 miles and then I started noticing the slow down. My ankle started hurting around mile 8 or 9 and caused a further slow down. By mile 10 I had run the farthest I ever had and my knees started talking to me a bit. My pace by mile 11 was about 9:30 miles and was starting to be in real pain. I was able to mentally block some of it out but I REALLY wanted to finish! The last mile I was in trouble and my legs were in the most pain I've ever felt. I tried to sprint it out at the end but my legs couldn't go any faster. I finished at the limits of my ability at about 10 minute on the last mile. My final time was 1hr 56:01 minutes. Not too bad! Another mile and I would have seriously been crying. It was the most painful event I've ever been in. I wasn't exhausted at the end, my breathing was fine, I was just in physical pain in my knees, ankles, and hips. It took about 3 weeks after the race to recover enough where I could run again.
In other news, our property is moving along nicely. I've been working on the barn quite a bit and another 3-4 weekends and it should be finished. We staked out our future house last weekend too. So now I just need to finish up the foundation plan for the house and hire an architect to finish the plans for us. Before we move, we need to sell this house and I think that is going to be our only sticking point. The economy sucks for housing now that I think we are slightly upside down on the house. We plan on putting it up for sale in late spring sometime.
Well, that gives ya'll some of the news. Hopefully I'll be a little better at this in the future.
