So today I ran the Victoria half-marathon and it was my best race to date. Amazing. Its 12hrs later and I'm still riding the high. I went in to the race up a couple lbs from my lowest (about 139). But I had trained well especially on distance and felt pretty good. My only concern was I kinda fell off the wagon on speed training the last couple weeks.
I usually eat about 1700cals during the week but on Thursday I upped that to 2200 and added more carbs. Saturday night we went out for dinner and I had an appy, spaghetti and dessert :) The race was at 7:30 Sunday morning so I got up at 5:25 and ate a bagel with PB + banana. Tried to drink a liter of water but couldnt get that much in me (as well as a coffee) before my cut-off of 6am. Saturday was practically a monsoon with the wind of rain but we woke up to a sunny morning with no wind which was great! I had to pee a million times before the start of the race but at least then I knew I wouldnt have to go once we got started.
The race started and I noticed the 1hr and 40 mins pacer was right in front of me. I was hoping to beat my previous personal best of 1:44 but I thought 1:40 might be too fast and I didnt want to burn out so I didnt pay too much attention to him. I just told myself to stay at a comfortable pace. But every time I looked up he was still right in front of me. When I came up to 10k I got pretty excited because I felt comfortable. I was keeping up to him and it wasnt wearing me out and I got inspired that I could stay with him the entire race.
I have never run with a pacer before and he was awesome! He kept us relaxed on the hills and speedy on the downhill. He was exactly on pace at every mile. He told us to huddle together so it was less effort as we were drafting from the runners in front of us. He shouted encouragements and told us we could do it! I stayed right behind him the entire race. I felt strong, it wasnt hard to stay with him. There was no point in the race I thought I couldnt do this, in fact I knew based on how I was feeling that I was going to kill my previous best!
The last km he shouted at us to stay ahead of him, that we were going to finish sub-1:40, that we had it! It was exactly what I needed. The last 100m I gave it all I had and sprinted across the finish line to finish at 1hr and 39 mins and 44 seconds :) taking 5 mins off of my previous best. To tell you the truth I probably a had a bit more in me, I didnt "leave it on the course", not much but there was a little bit left in the tank :)
I came in 87th out of almost 2000 women, the top 5%. I havent stopped smiling all day. What a rush!
