CleveRocks
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster worshipper
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2005
- Messages
- 9,589
I have only encouraging words for you. I did 2 half-marathons in the past 8 months, and I never did anything like that before then.
At 40 years old, I had been running only about 2 years, intermittently, only about 2.5 miles at a time, tops, and I would go months with no running at all.
Then my wife an I were silly enough to register for our first-ever half-marathon, which we did in April.
We ran and walked, more walking that running. But even for the walking we aimed at a 15:00 minute per mile pace. We entered a very walker-friendly race. The full-marathon was 2 loops around the course, so there was absolutely no sweeping of half-marathoners. We finished at a 15:44 pace.
We then entered another half-marathon that we completed last month. This one was harder because I had gained about 20 pounds since the first one (and I was nice and overweight to begin with!) -- it seems that even though I had stopped training after the first race, I kept up with the appetite and the increased eating to fuel the training.
In addition, I had some sort of mystery abdominal ailment about halfway through my training which sidelined me for at least 3 weeks! Ugh! Anyway, this second race, the Philadelphia half-marathon, seemed to have very strict sweep times and road re-opening times. I must have driven this one race official nuts with numerous e-mails asking him detailed questions. The FAQ stated that roads will re-open on a 16:00 pace by gun-time, and I was doing a VERY slow 16:45 in training, even though I felt I was going as fast as I could.
Anyway, we finished the race at a 16:23 pace (chip-time), slower than the 16:00 pace the FAQ and my e-mail buddy told me was the maximum. All the city streets were still closed, all the water stops were still open, etc.
Don't discount that race day adrenaline that everyone talks about ... it's for real! I live at the beach and train 100% exclusively on boardwalk, which is great for training because it's flat and straight and the wood is much friendlier to joints than blacktop or concrete. The race was on city streets (blacktop) and was quite hilly in several spots, making it much slower-going. On top of that, it was 38 degrees for the race and it rained from Mile 6 'til the finish. And I finished 22 seconds per mile FASTER than my training pace.
GO FOR IT!
At 40 years old, I had been running only about 2 years, intermittently, only about 2.5 miles at a time, tops, and I would go months with no running at all.
Then my wife an I were silly enough to register for our first-ever half-marathon, which we did in April.
We ran and walked, more walking that running. But even for the walking we aimed at a 15:00 minute per mile pace. We entered a very walker-friendly race. The full-marathon was 2 loops around the course, so there was absolutely no sweeping of half-marathoners. We finished at a 15:44 pace.
We then entered another half-marathon that we completed last month. This one was harder because I had gained about 20 pounds since the first one (and I was nice and overweight to begin with!) -- it seems that even though I had stopped training after the first race, I kept up with the appetite and the increased eating to fuel the training.
In addition, I had some sort of mystery abdominal ailment about halfway through my training which sidelined me for at least 3 weeks! Ugh! Anyway, this second race, the Philadelphia half-marathon, seemed to have very strict sweep times and road re-opening times. I must have driven this one race official nuts with numerous e-mails asking him detailed questions. The FAQ stated that roads will re-open on a 16:00 pace by gun-time, and I was doing a VERY slow 16:45 in training, even though I felt I was going as fast as I could.
Anyway, we finished the race at a 16:23 pace (chip-time), slower than the 16:00 pace the FAQ and my e-mail buddy told me was the maximum. All the city streets were still closed, all the water stops were still open, etc.
Don't discount that race day adrenaline that everyone talks about ... it's for real! I live at the beach and train 100% exclusively on boardwalk, which is great for training because it's flat and straight and the wood is much friendlier to joints than blacktop or concrete. The race was on city streets (blacktop) and was quite hilly in several spots, making it much slower-going. On top of that, it was 38 degrees for the race and it rained from Mile 6 'til the finish. And I finished 22 seconds per mile FASTER than my training pace.
GO FOR IT!