Well, it’s almost time for my half marathon. I’ve been training for a long time for this and I think that I’m ready for it! On last week I took it easier than I had been doing. I ran 5k on Tuesday because I was still recovering from the 10k race from last Sunday. I went for a 2 hour ride on my bike on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun!

I got invited to the beach for the weekend with a group of friends, so I moved my long run for the week from Sunday to Thursday night. I ran 10 miles (16k) on two and a half hours, I was at a slow pace, but enjoying my run because it was raining!! it doesn’t rain much around here, so I don’t get the chance to run when it’s raining. I have to say that It is an amazing feeling to run under the rain, I felt like I was fighting the elements! it makes me feel stronger when it gets harder to keep going, it gets colder, I’m soaked, my clothes get heavier, there’s noone else running but me, but it doesn’t matter, I just keep on running, no matter what… and being able to do that feels great!

On Friday I went for a short bike ride before leaving for the beach with my friends, It wasn’t a long ride because I was still tired from Thursday’s run. On Saturday I swam on open waters for the first time since I started my swimming lessons and well… it’s a lot harder than swimming in a pool, there are no lanes for me to follow, and the currents and waves makes it even harder to swim in a straight line! But I managed to swim around 300 meters, which I think its ok since I’m just starting swimming. On Sunday I managed to wake up at 8 am before everyone else, I saw that as a signal for me to run, so I put on my running shoes on (yup, I took them to the beach with me!) and went for a 12k run on the beach!!

Now it’s time to rest for the half marathon. I think this is going to be a hard week for me. I am so used to working out everyday and just thinking that I wont do much this week is driving me crazy already! I will probably run 5k tomorrow and 3k on Thursday, but that doesn’t seem like much, and to top that I am going to be eating more carbs than usually to have more energy for the big day… So until Sunday I’m going to be accumulating a lot of energy that I wont be using, and if you add the anxiety from the race… well, it doesn’t looks like it’s going to be a fun week, at least not until Sunday.

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Yesterday was my first 10k race, it surpassed all my expectations, in every possible way, from the number of people that were racing, the hype, my performance in the race, everything was better than I had expected, it was GREAT!

I decided to make 2 posts about the race, one describing how it was to race for the first time, and this one with the results:

First, lets go with the numbers of how I performed:

Overall Position: 962
Position in male group: 857 (women seem to be slow around here :S )
Position in my age group: 133
Distance: 10k
Average Heart Rate: 92% (178 bpm)
Max Heart Rate: 118% (231 bpm)
Heart Rate zone 65% – 85% (127 bmp – 166 bpm)
Time in Zone : 4:45
Time Above Zone: 47:42
Calories: 803
Time 53:33!!!

I have been training for a half marathon, and because of this most of my training has been focused towards endurance, being able to finish the race, no matter how long it takes me, I rarely do any speed training so my time goal was 1 hour 5 mins… I FINISHED IN 53:33!!!! this is so much better than I was expecting!! The best I was hoping for was 59 mins, but i did in 53:33!!!!

Ok, but if you see my numbers you can clearly see why I did better than I was expecting. My Heart Rate was a lot higher than it should had been. And this wasn’t on peak moments, it was high constantly during the whole race, peaking higher than it ever had before (the highest I had registered before this race was 206 bpm, and I got to 231 bpm on the race). There is no way that I could keep this pace on my half marathon in 2 weeks, so I have to ignore everyone around me and just go slow. And after the half marathon I HAVE to start focussing my training on speed, I have to start doing intervals.

Other than my Heart Rate, I think my numbers look good. I will (probably) go to another 10k in june, so I’m going to try and get some speed-works done by then, to see if I can improve this time without putting so much stress into my body.

Thanks for reading and for your support!
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Yesterday was my first 10k race, it surpassed all my expectations, in every possible way, from the number of people that were racing, the hype, my performance in the race, everything was better than I had expected, it was GREAT!

I decided to make 2 posts about the race, one with The Results and this one, describing how it was to race for the first time:

The race was at 7:30am, so I woke up at 6, I had eaten really well the day before so I decided not to have anything for breakfast (my stomach isn’t good at accepting solids early in the morning anyways…). I had a glass of water and took a long shower to wake up. After that I made a playlist for the race. I usually run while listening to music and it helps me keep the pace, so I thought this would help me not to start too fast and gain speed as the songs progressed. I got my running clothes on, including a huge cotton shirt that they gave me when I signed up for the race, and that I thought was mandatory to use (but I found out later that it wasn’t). I went to pick my cousin next door and we went to the race.

I was amazed when i got there, there was sooooo many people on the street!! There were over 6 thousand people participating (my cousin was #6045 and I was #5542). We had to run to get our timing chips because we were short on time and then run to were everyone was waiting to start the race.

This much running served me as a warm up, so when we found a good place I just stretched for about 30 seconds and the race started!!! or so they were saying… Because I was in the middle of the group it took about 2 minutes for the people around me to start walking and about 30 more seconds to go over the starting line. This was taking forever! I WANTED TO START RUNNING!!

I had planned to follow Chris advice and go at my pace and not to start too fast!! But at this time I could only think about one thing: RUN!!! And that’s what I did. I didn’t go all out, but I went faster than I had planned. I started passing people and kept going until I found my self surrounded by a group of runners that were at my pace, where it didn’t feel too crowded, so I slowed down a bit and stayed with them.

Caracas is on a Valley, so there are a lot of hills, and this particular race had plenty of them. I found that I get along with hills, I don’t slow down on them or get too tired when going up (my long runs on sunday include some hills), so I usually started to pass people whenever we started to go uphill.

Race was going really well, I did the first 3k in 14:47 (according to my own stopwatch, there are no official split times), so I was a lot faster than my expected 6:10 mins/km pace. After that I didn’t see the distance signs for a while. I kept going at my pace and everything was going well, until I saw the 6k mark. By that time I thought I was farther than that, so I decided to slow down for 2k and start going hard at the 8k mark again. The moment I slowed I got SIDE STITCHES!!!! first time I get them while running, but thankfully I had been reading about them on Rachel’s blog last week, so I knew what to do: slow down, deep breaths, ‘push down on my liver underneath my rib cage’…

By the time I got to the 7k mark the side stitches were gone and I was starting to speed up again. I had my biggest Newbie Racer moment here: I see on the distance a Gatorade Tent, I get close to it and grab a glass of Gatorade, but I don’t slow down, and when I take the glass up to try and drink some, I spill it all over myself!! MY EYES OMG!! lol, nothing bad happened really, I used the extremely big (and now heavy) cotton shirt they gave me to dry my face and kept going without stopping, or drinking Gatorade . I actually had a couple of newbie moments, all related with the hydration tents. Each time I grabbed one of the plastic little bags filled with with water that you have to bite to open, I seemed to somehow swallow a part of the bag and choke on it!!!

Ok, enough of my newbieness and back to the race… I kept gaining speed and got to the 8k mark and after that I just started to go faster, it didn’t matter if I was going uphill or downhill, I knew I was going to do a good time and that I was going a lot faster than planned. I was tired, but It didn’t matter at that time. The 9k mark, keep going, faster, passing people, every step I was giving I saw less and less people around me. I kept going until I saw the finish line and sprinted with all I had left in me, I heard the voice of my aunt saying something about me passing by them, but I couldn’t turn around, my eyes, all my strength, all that I had left was fixed on the finish line, so I kept on running….

In the end, I completely ignored the pace that I had planned, I didn’t stretch or warm up properly, had side stitches and made a couple of newbie mistakes. But I had a great day. I did so much better than I was expecting and loved how it felt to race. It was a great experience to have before my big race in 2 weeks. And well…There’s nothing like crossing that finish line after giving it all you had, I can’t wait to do it again

Thanks for reading and for your support!

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I had been wondering for a while if I should join a 10k race that’s taking place this Sunday. It would be a good experience to take part in a race before the half marathon, so that I know how it’s like to run with a pack, learn a bit more about hydration points and get some experience overall. But on the other side, this Sunday I had planned to make my last Long Run (20k) before the half marathon…

Since I had really good sensations last Sunday when I ran 18k and felt like I could keep going for a few more k’s, I’ve decided to go for the 10k race. I think that I have trained enough for the Half, and that if I do a 15k run next week I will be more than ready for it, after all, my goal is to finish it, to get a first time so I can try and beat it next time!

So its on!! 10k on Sunday!! And I’m going to PR!! (of course… being my first race and all)
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