Houston Half - US Half Marathon Championships

Today was a great race down in Houston. I could complain over how if I had only run 9 seconds faster, I would have been 8 places higher, but I refuse to let that haunt me, as I leave Houston today with a new PR of 63:29 (formerly 64:42), which was good for 19th place in the US Half Marathon Championships.

Coming off a somewhat disappointing road season in the fall, I set my eyes once again upon the gruelling and necessary base training phase. My miles climbed higher as my high quality long runs increased in length. I was firing on all cylinders and eating like an animal. Week after week I was nailing my long hard efforts and looking forward to capitalizing on my new fitness. But come December, each run felt a little more fatigued, and even my easy runs were starting to become a bit of a chore. I began traveling to see relatives pretty early in December and my nutrition began to suffer as I spent long hours driving in my car. It seemed that with each run, I was taking a trough and removing a little dirt. After a few weeks, that became a hole and I was stricken with a tight calf that wouldn't let go. I had to take a couple days off and my mileage dropped precipitously (you can always see my training log here).

My fall training block, week by week on a bar chart (injury in orange box)

Now my challenge became treating the calf just to get to the starting line in Houston, AND finish healthy, since the longer term goal is to run well at the US XC Championships (Feb. 7th in Boulder). I began an aggressive treatment regimen and saw an old friend, Dr. Yost, in Cincinnati to receive some ART treatment. Luckily, the hole I had dug hadn't become too deep and I was able to get back to running after a few days.

With only two weeks to go until Houston, Dennis (my coach) and I crafted a plan to try and get in some quality workouts to get my energy systems topped off blow the dust of my top end speed. I honestly had a couple pretty tough workouts and my confidence was rather low. I had originally planned to try and break 63 (4:49/mi pace), but then after a 4 x 2 mile workout where I could hardly maintain 5:10/mi pace, I started to question if I could even break 65 minutes.

Nonetheless, Houston approached regardless of my preparedness and I did my best to trust in my training that had happened before my injury. The day before I suffered a rather debilitating stomach ache for 4 hours in the morning and my nutrition was awful. I wasn't able to eat until 1:30pm--the perfect day to have nutrition issues! Still, I pressed on trusting that training had gone very well for quite some time and that it hadn't gone away.

This morning I lined up, feeling more relaxed than usual, knowing that all I could do was my best--what was under my control. The front pack blew away pretty fast off the line, but there was a solid 63:20ish pack that I ran with the whole time and just stayed relaxed. In fact, I was feeling so good that at 10.5 that I made a 5k-like move and probably dropped the next 800 in 2:20 or so. Mistake. I really should have waited until the last 800 to make such an aggressive move. I got swallowed right back up by the pack by 11.5 miles and then passed by a few guys. Had I waited until the end to put the pressure on that I could have been closer to 11th place but I learn to race another day. I will put that nugget of wisdom in my pocket for next time.

Thanks to Houston Marathon for putting on such a great event!

With teammates Meghan Peyton and Jon Peterson post-race