Where's the Beach?

On Sunday, March 1, I woke up and ran the  Little Rock Half Marathon  for the 5th time. I'm beginning to think this race is completely cursed for me. The only time I've run it well was my first time. Since then, it's been injuries, torn plantar fascia, craptastic weather ... and this year it was seemingly all of the above. Even the finisher medals hadn't arrived! (Though, while we didn't get our real medals, the race directors made certain that we had a temporary medal after we crossed that line.) So, here I was completely untrained coming off of a stress fracture. 100% chance of rain, cold rain at that. I had only been running again for 2 weeks. No speed work, longest distance was 8 miles (done the day before). However, I was feeling pretty good overall. No foot pain. Just a lowered endurance level, to be expected after not running for 37 long days. I didn't really announce that I was going to run. I wasn't completely sure I would. But, when it came d...

Saturday morning I did something I swore I'd never do. I ran a marathon. On a complete whim, I had signed up for the Jacob Wells 3 Bridges Marathon . I won't lie, I may have had some wine that particular evening. Then I saw a Facebook update that there were only 5 spots left. I said something to Jason and he handed me my credit card. The rest? History (as they say). I feel like I should apologize for the rambling, jumble of a recap in advance. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole experience. Preface I think I should do a preface about this race, about the emotions surrounding it. Jacob Wells was the race director. He started this race last year. Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly in November during a marathon. The Arkansas running community is a very tight community. So his death was a huge loss. I never knew Jacob personally. I had seen him at races. He was known for giving high fives and shouting out kudos. Let's just say that his spir...

I truly had good intentions of getting my Soaring Wings Half Marathon race recap posted Monday. But, yeah, well ... Let's just say I took the day off, went out for a recovery run and got a massage instead. Saturday I raced my 9th half marathon, the 4th time I've done this particular race. It's usually one of the first cold runs of the season. It's usually a really good race because of that, especially coming off of a brutal summer. And there is usually a fantastic crowd support on the course. Usually is the key word here folks. This year Mother Nature had something else in store. It was 60 degrees at the start of the race, sunny and temperatures quickly increasing. It was also nice and humid. A winning combo right? I lined up in Corral B, which only had one pace group of 1:35. I knew I wasn't going to be able to hang with that time. It's a hilly course and then with the heat added into the mix ... well, I was doubting myself from the beginning. My fastest...