Sitting at week 7 of training for the St. Joe River Half Marathon coming up June 8th. Training has been fairly decent, better than past races, just following the training plan and actually getting out and doing it. A lot easier to train in the spring/summer when football/basketball isn't hovering over my schedule. The biggest thing I've noticed is my pace. As of right now, I'm averaging 9:30 per mile and that's been pretty consistent the past several weeks. I ran an 8-miler a few weekends ago with Irvin and Tucker, and we rocked that pace the entire time, if not a little faster. Since after my first race, I've wanted to finish a half at 2:10 or under. Currently my PR is 2:20....but if I could keep a pace under 10 the entire race, I know I could hit it!
We drove out to the race course on Sunday to check it out, I was nervous of the elevation chart I saw on 'mapmyrun' so I wanted to see what we needed to prepare for. The course itself isn't as hilly as I thought, it's more rolling hills. What did stand out was the quietness of the course. The majority of the race is going to run through farmland and back roads next to the river and in the woods. It's been raining a ton, and after the winter we had, there are a lot of potholes on the course. I'm hoping those get filled in before the race! There will be approximately 1,000 people running this thing, so at least it will be better than the Greater Portland half!
This weekend is Bloomsday in Spokane, and Corinne, Javier, Irvin and I are all running it. Corinne and I will run it, but I know the boys are going to want to race, which is fine. 50,000 people in the event, I'm not sure how much 'racing' I'd get to do anyway! To me, it will be a fun time to enjoy a race, like the St. Pats Dash Irv and I do every year. I think it's important to throw some fun races in there between the big ones, to liven things up a bit! We'll see how this goes!
