Great Western Half Marathon

The past weekend, Justin and I (and a couple of our run-club buddies) ran in the Great Western Half Marathon. (That's 13.1 miles.)

Thanks for the pic Jilly!

This was definitely not our first half marathon, we ran several 13.1+ distances when training for the Chicago Marathon last year, but it was the first organized half marathon race we repeated. Last year when we participated, it was our first time running that distance and we did well for amateurs. I finished in 1:56:28 and Justin scored a 2:14:52. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that not only had Justin been in the hospital for pancreatitis symptoms a few weeks earlier, he had also injured his plantar fascia playing in a league volleyball game a little over a week before the race and decided that race day would be a good day to wear new shoes... thus, his slower-than-he-could-have-ran-it-had-he-been-100%-and-in-worn-in-shoes finishing time. Anywho, this year, I improved, setting a personal record (PR) and Justin did far better, also PRing with a shared finishing time of 1:53:49. (Yes, we stayed together the whole time. Aren't we cute?)

Awesome photo of us finishing by our friend Chelsey.

Some trainers and other runners aren't going to like to hear this, and I don't condone our behavior even though it worked for us, but we didn't particularly train this year like we did last. After running the full marathon, we didn't let our weekend long-runs get any shorter than 8-10 miles on average, we maintained running 5-milers twice during the work-week, and we did do a 13.1 test a couple weeks before the race. So, we were fortunate that pulling this out, wasn't really a challenge this year.

If you have been toying with upping your distance, I would highly recommend a half marathon. It is challenging, but it's also an achievable distance in which you can push yourself within reason. I enjoyed running the Chicago Marathon last year, but I'm going to be sticking to halfs for a while.