Army Ten Miler Recap

Goal:
57:30
Top 5

Actual:
2.5 mile warmup
57:12, 3rd place overall female splits of 539, 542, 547, 532, 540, 552, 547, 547, 540, 542
1.5 cool down for about 14 miles total

After spending a week preparing for my second term of my MBA, it was a nice relief to hang out with Liz, Garrett and Meagan in the district the day before this race. I had been questioning how sound my rationale was to do a race right before heading out to China to kick off my second term, but after getting to DC, I knew that I had put in the work to post a decent time.  

Since I'm a whole month behind on my blog, I'm going to keep this short and just copy from what I posted in athleticore.  I felt really good about this race considering my lifestyle and lack of doing half marathon specific workouts. In the race, I had the pleasure of running with Meagan for about 2.5-3 miles and then after that I was solo, except for some of the men that either passed me or that I passed along the way.

I passed two Africans around 4-6 miles and then I passed another girl around mile 8. I had stomach cramps starting after mile 5, so that was a real struggle and a part of me really wanted to drop off and walk to the Lincoln Memorial instead. I really had to focus on not bargaining with myself to get a slower time, although I still fell victim to my own mind. For instance, after mile 6, I told myself "okay, you just have to keep running sub 6:00s to run sub 58." I should have told myself instead: "keep running sub 550", but I didn't want to hurt too bad. Fortunately, my body was somehow able to ignore my mind and push through to a pace faster than 5:50.  

Overall, I was very pleased with my effort and am impressed that I've been able to maintain a decent amount of fitness during my first term of my masters program.  Tomorrow, I head to China!