Well, we’ve made it. Tomorrow, December 10th, I will be running my last official race: the Holiday Half. This will cap my 2023, which began well, went well, and then ended shittily. Is this the default for my life? Perhaps, but them’s the breaks.
I’ll be honest: I really don’t want to run this. My patience with this year had quickly run out, and the forecast for the 10th is rainy. And not just a light drizzle, it’s supposed to rain pretty flagrantly for the two+ hours I’ll be out there plodding along. What’s worse, the forecast for the days after are sunny. This is following days upon days of rain in Portland.
But I’m going to do it because I paid for it, goddammit. I paid a lot of money to run this half marathon and I’ll do it even if I walk most of it.
My training plan has been abandoned and I guess I’m “playing it by ear,” or really “running it by feet.” Here are my goals:
G Goal: 2:12:25 / 10:06/mi
A Goal: 2:15:00 / 10:18/mi
B Goal: 2:20:00 / 10:41/mi
C Goal: Just do the damn thing.
*G Goal is my Garmin Goal, aka the time Garmin predicts I can do.
These are all within my ability, I believe. 10:06 I know I can maintain for a few miles at least. Maybe even 13! I suspect my Garmin Coach training helped bolster my pace a bit. My stomach has been weird lately due to stress and poor eating because I’m broke because of my car getting broken into. Lots of stuff happening recently which has soured my overall life experience.
So, no real pace plan other than to try and keep a good one. I’m going to try, try, try my damnedest to start slow, but we all know how these things go. I’d love a negative split but I don’t know if my body is capable of it yet.
For fuel I have Clif bars and Powerade. Breakfast of champions. Honestly not sure if they will be adequate or not. They certainly didn’t feel adequate on my 10 mile run, but they settled a lot better than gels.
I appreciate that I’ve been at this long enough that I’m approaching a second half marathon with a bit of a blase attitude. It’s still so surprising that it’s December already. I’ve tipped over the 1,200 mile club for ORRC, and am well on course to hit 800 miles running for the year. Overall, huge success. Learned a lot about myself, about my ability to persevere even when I don’t wanna.
I’ll have a race report tomorrow. My last one of 2023. Until then.