Once again I find myself increasingly busy as the running
reaches its peak before I taper off. To
add on to this madness I signed up for the 2014 70.3 mile Ironman Triathlon in
July. This means I’ve been adding some
serious swim and bike training to my schedule, I should say more increasing than adding as I’ve been both biking/spinning
and swimming regularly for some time…. I’ll get into the tri’s later but first
let me catch up on my running.
On Memorial Day weekend we drove down to Madison, Wisconsin
for the “Conquer the Capital” series with the DRC Crew… this event consists of
a Saturday night 10K and a Sunday morning ½ Marathon. Both went well although I really used the 10K
as more of a warm-up for the ½ as it was only 10 hours away and I was more
focused on pushing myself in that distance.
I was kicking myself later as I
found out I came in 4th place overall by less than 1 minute for the
CTC and just missed a nice prize, always next year. But the ½ went awesome, it was a fast course
with a couple hills but very manageable.
I’ve run about 10 half marathons in the last couple years and feel I’m
really feeling mentally and physically comfortable with the distance and how my
body handles the miles. My time in the
race was 1:24:46 which was a slight drop from my previous PR at Marion which
was 1:25:15. I did feel after the finish
I had a little too much energy so I think I’ll keep chipping away at the pace,
I ran a 6:28 pace for Madison and I would like to see myself around a 6:15 to
get closer to the 1:20 mark.
More than just my time though we had an awesome trip with
the DRC once again! It was great
cheering everyone on and exciting watching many break their personal best’s
once again. Hayden ran the kids race
Saturday afternoon with Rob’s daughter Romy and had a great time, the medals
were really cool! We also took the kids
to the zoo on Saturday morning and had a great time, Camryn loved petting the
goats in the kids area. We drove back to
Dubuque Sunday afternoon and I was able to pick up a bonus 5K on Monday,
running the Grey Ribbon Race at Dubuque Senior High School. My time was a little slow at 19:10 but
considering the 19.3 miles races the previous 24 hours I was not complaining, I
even managed to pick up a win for my age division which was sweet!
So now I’m back to the grind, having fun prepping for
Grandma’s and Racine and trying to find a good balance amidst the chaos which
is my training schedule… more on that later!
