Houston Half Marathon (October 2016)

This past weekend I competed in the Houston half marathon as training for the upcoming marathon in January. This season I am mainly focusing on speed and maintaining a good health condition. I am being very careful on my training to ovoid any injuries. I want to be able to perform my best once January comes.

Thus, this past weekend was a blur. I have to say that I was a little nervous on my performance before the raise. Not because I wasn’t ready, but because the Texas heat is a killer. Even in plain fall, morning race promised to be on the 60’s going only higher. The humidity and fogginess was off the roof. Even though this race is just a part of my training for the full marathon, I had goals. Goal (A ) was to PR, last time I raced this race I was able to PR a 1:42, that being only the second half marathon I had ever raced, I was super excited. Sadly I haven’t raced that many half marathons ever since, and the one I did ran wasn’t a PR at all. Going on this race my thoughts were pretty simple. I needed to prove to myself that I have come a long way.

So, this half marathon means a lot to me. I was able to finish in a total of 1:38, my original goal was to finish in a 1:40. But, since I was feeling pretty good during the first ten miles I decided to just go for it. Despite the heat and humidity I was able to pull off a good race. I am very proud of myself. I am also looking forward to what is next to come. I can’t wait to see what I am capable of accomplishing in January.

 

Houston Half Marathon (October 2016)

“26.2 Miles of Greatness”

It might seem crazy for some, including my husband, Ha! Ha, but on January 17, 2016 my husband and I did our first marathon. I am so proud of our accomplishment. I still remember back in January of last year, when I told my husband that I had this amazing idea of running a marathon. He was like you want what? Do what? Over the next couple of days, he tried to come up with many ideas of why we shouldn’t run the marathon. Yet, I was determined to accomplish this milestone. I have ran several half-marathons throughout the last couple of years and I felt like I was ready to take the next leap in my running passion.

My hubby however, felt like we needed more time. Yet, being the persistent wife that I am, I managed to convince him. So we began our journey of training. We started about six months before the race. Now, let me tell you training season was not all beautiful. My hubby got injured right at the beginning of peek week. When we started to do our longest runs, he could not join me. I did 15,18, and 20 miles on my own. We even considered the option of him not running at all. I was so scared of him pulling his muscles/tendons and being injured permanently. That wasn’t all either. On top of my hubby being injured, I too injured myself on my twenty mile run. We were three weeks ahead before race day and there we were injured.

As weeks went by it was suddenly race weekend. I got pumped and nervous at the same time. I couldn’t believe that this was it. I had trained all that I could and finally the most expected weekend of the year was here. We went to the running expo and had a blast. Lots of people were there. Later that evening we did our mandatory carb loading. We enjoyed stuffing ourselves with pasta, as we were burning this off the next day.

Saturday was very emotional, but Sunday was even more. My marathon experience was one of the best. Even though, we ended up arriving late to corral “A”. God! I don’t know how I always do it. I was supposed to be in the corral at 6:35 a.m. and I got there at 6:40 a.m. Needleless to say, they closed my corral entrance before I could get in. Luckily, I was still on time for the following corral.

There were tons of people and it was super cold before the race started. I was wearing shorts because I knew that once I started to get running I was going to warm up. I had an extra sweater, which I would regret later. You see, runners just toss their sweaters around the corner, but I was too afraid to loose my sweater. It’s one of my favorite sweaters for crying out loud. Lol! So, I wore it for most of the race and strapped around my waist once I got too hot. It’s very uncomfortable by the way. Thankfully, the crowd was amazing and cheerful which helped mitigated boredom and thoughts of soreness. I saw tons of people from the neighborhood giving out water, bananas and oranges to the participants. It was such a humbling experience to see all of these people sharing and cheering for their loved ones, and strangers.

My husband and I were crushing it until mile 19 when he started to feel that his muscles were collapsing. With all the lack of his long distance training he had skipped due to his previous injury, symptoms were starting to show. I tried to slow down for him, but I was slowing down way too much. I decided to keep up and do the last seven on my own. I was a little sad to leave him behind, but I knew that I couldn’t push him too much. Once I started running on my own, I had more time to focus on me and think about what I had to do. I thought about so many things. It’s true of what they say about running a marathon and finding yourself. I did find out that I am stronger than what I think I am. I can indeed accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I am a mighty little woman. I ended up finishing the marathon feeling very strong and crushing my goal. I had initially anticipated 4 hours. Yet, I finish in 3hrs 49minutes. Hurray! Not so bad for my first marathon. I felt so alive and energized at the end that I felt like I could had done it faster. Thus, being my first marathon I did not wanted to push it. My hubby finished in 4hrs 10 minutes. It was a very good day for us. I am still on cloud nine. I feel ready for another one. Ha! Ha! Not really, but I am surely thinking about my next marathon. I have completely fallen in love with the 26.2.  

Here I was doing the last stretch.

My husband Ethan, and my friend Karla, after the race.

Before we started the marathon.

He is running because he loves his wife.

We are the people that choose to run over sleep. suffer over being content. We thrive off pain and choose it over and over again. Pain is our welcome friend. We fear nothing.