Yesterday I had the pleasure of running the inaugural pasadena half marathon as part of the Conquer LA challenge. Ok, so while it is cool that my medal says that I am a legacy runner, the race itself was anything but a pleasure. For those that follow the weather, California has had a crazy storm system just dumping rain on us. Yes, thats right it was raining for the entire race. We started the race 20 minutes late, in the cold rain. The rain started off not as bad, a nice drizzle, however as I am a slow runner, by the time I finished the rain was pouring down.
So first off, the weather was awful, and by the end of the race I was drenched despite my rain jacket that is supposed to be water resistant, that only lasted for so long. Also I am pretty sure my watch died 2x during the race because it was that wet through my jacket.
Now if the weather was not enough, my training has not been quite what I wanted. I know you would think that the beginning of the year I would be all over this training stuff right? Except I have been on a fast through my church which has limited my ability to train at the level I wanted.
Then, because of the weather there were multiple wardrobe changes, you know jacket off, jacket on, long sleeve under jacket off. There were some tech messages that kept coming through from my work with people that forgot I was not going to be there and that someone else was handling my responsibilities.
One amazing thing was that for the first time in awhile, despite the cold and humid weather which are typical triggers for my asthma, and I did not need to use my inhaler. My time was not my best, or my worst. It was close to be best, and had I not had the issues along the way it probably would have been much closer to my best time.
So next month I run another half, and I am running the Divas half marathon. In March I am running the last of my Conquer LA challenge and doing the LA Marathon. So you will hear about those races coming up an day training for them.
Have you had a race that you did not do as good as possible? What changes in training did you make?
Fitness and Faith 