Herman Memorial Sugarland Half Marathon; The Prelude...

Tomorrow morning I have my first race since Rocky Raccoon.

It's been over a year since I last raced, and I don't even know if I could count Rocky Raccoon as a real "race" since I wasn't pushing my self to run any quicker, just longer.

My last half marathon was the hottest half back in August of 2011. So it's been a year a half since my last half marathon, and that race was horrendous... My last good half was actually 2 years ago at this exact race, the Herman Memorial Sugarland Half Marathon, where I ran a 1:42.

I'm about 99% sure I won't be able to PR here this year. I've only been training again for the past 2 moths due to work, so there's no way I'm in anywhere near as good of shape as I was then. But I wonder how I compare now to where I was at my first half marathon at the Livestrong Half Marathon in Austin back in February of 2011? I ran a 1:57 there on a very hilly course with lots of crowd congestion after 5 and a half months of training. But then I was starting from scratch, now I have a decent base of miles but a 6 month gap of little to no running....

Since resuming my training I have ran a 17 mile long run, a 13.1 mile long run, and several runs in the 6~8 mile range. I even ran a nice and easy 8 mile run on Thursday.

My goal going into the race is to keep a 8:50~9:00 pace for the first 8 miles. That will give me a 1:10:40 to 1:12:00 for the first 8 miles leaving me roughly 48 minutes to complete the last 5 miles. At this point I plan on evaluating how I'm feeling and either picking up the pace, or staying steady at this pace.

The goal is to break 2 hours. Ideally break 1:57. But we'll see what happens!


Random update. Halfway through the last sentence my wife and I witnessed a single vehicle wreck just after it had happened. A man (drunk, very drunk) managed to leave the road, and the ground, in his Ford Ranger and stay that way for about 60 feet until he was abruptly stopped by a tree and brought back down to the ground... Upside down. There had to be several hundred beer cans strewn throughout the area, along with a lot of very nice tools. The guy was still alive and pinned in the truck by his seat belt. Lesson learned, drinking and driving isn't smart... But I already knew that.