An Extra Boost

Saturday morning, I got up bright and early for a run with the TNT group and Liz, my Baltimore Half Marathon partner. I was nervous. In case you missed it, my previous post was all about my shins and the pain they were causing me.

 Saturday was the perfect running day. It was cool at the start, just 40* and clear. The fall TNT group was meeting up too, so we listened to their coach give them a pep talk, then Coach Katye gave us ours. Liz and I had planned on 10, but Katye mentioned it’s not too early to start tapering, so we decided on 6.

 The first mile—I struggled to get into a groove—but no shin pain. Hmmm,weird. The second mile, I managed to pick up the pace a bit and keep up with Liz (or Speed Demon as I shall call her) and Katye dropped off and headed back to some of the other TNTers. At the end of the second mile, I wanted to walk a second, so Liz obliged. I figured this would be the true test. Last week, my shins would hurt AFTER I would take my walk break and start up again.

After a couple minutes of walking, we started again, and kept the pace under 12:00/mile (shut up—this is fast for me) to the third mile marker. I had the unfortunate opportunity to use a port a pot (seriously, how do you get poo on the seat? WTF?) and came out gagging and walked a couple more minutes to catch my breath and control the gag reflex. We started up again, and still managed to keep the pace under 12:00/mile (pretty close to 11:20 according to Olga) and this pattern continued through the rest of the 6 miles. We did stop between miles 5 and 6 to snap a picture of some deer and fawns in the river bed (ahhh, nature at its finest), but the rest of the run was uneventful (well, aside from the cyclist who came flying up next to me and almost ran me over) and more importantly, pain free! So maybe the shin pain was a fluke, or just because of the treadmill?


We finished 6.2 miles in 1 hour and 15 minutes—which sparked some confidence in me. Somehow this run made me super confident about the Baltimore Half Marathon coming up. I know I can do this race, I know that Liz and I are going to kill our previous half times too.




After some tasty treats, we treated ourselves to Wegman’s (mmmmmm chocolate croissant) and had some pretty good laughs.


I am starting to think I might have this running thing down now! This run couldn’t have come at a better time.


Now, I am thinking about trying to get a qualifying time for the National Half Marathon, which means my half needs to be at 2:30 or my ten miler at 1:50. Either way, I am determined to qualify. I will be running that race!