PEI Marathon Weekend - ending the season with another PB halfie!

2468 Bria Brown, 247/480 overall, Halifax PE CA, F 24/62 [age group 20-29], 1:59:42 (clock), 1:59:25 (chip), 5:42 (pace per km)

Mission: two half marathons, two weekends in a row accomplished! The weather turned out to be beautiful on Sunday despite another week of miserable rain, wind, and cold. The marathon weekend attracted some 1800 participants this year, a new record, which is fantastic for Charlottetown. Mark and I took the ferry over Friday evening and thankfully the rest of the weekend was smooth sailing relative to that "a la Titanic" fiasco. It was an interesting birthday, to say the least. Mom's curry chicken & carrot cake make up for the traumatizing boat ride.

We took Friday off (got our bikes tuned up in Truro on the way to the ferry) and only did a quick 20 minute run on Saturday. Sunday morning we were able to sleep in a bit (10am race start wha?!), grabbed some lattes at Beanz and headed to the race start. This was my third time running the PEI Half Marathon and unfortunately my sister was not running it this year like she always has in the past. BE trained for the full marathon and developed a stress fracture in her tibia a few weeks ago and therefore could not run the race. She's away for med school so she didn't bother making the flight home, understandably. However Mark (he finished 5th overall! such a speed demon), Mom, Michael, and BE's friend Jenn were running so I had lots of company. It was great to see some familiar faces from my old UPEI running group (we have come a long way!). Uncle Randy & Aunt Donna came to support at the finish line as well.

This was my "A" race (as Mark calls it) for this season. When we sketched out my goals back in April, originally this one was supposed to be a sub 1:50 but I had a lot more work to do on my surgery leg this season than we first anticipated. May was a month of strength & plyometrics, a crappy 10k race, and a lot of frustration. Things started to come around in June when I ran a PB 10k and built up some aerobic base. Finally, through July and August I was seeing some real progress especially with the addition of cycling and swimming to my regime. My runs became longer through Aug/Sept and I decided a realistic goal for PEI would be sub 2 hours. Next year is going to be my year, I needed this season to really get into shape again after my ITB problems last winter.

The race itself was interesting because I left my Garmin in Halifax and had to rely completely on the 2:00 half pace bunny (she did a great job, thanks Pam!). That's exactly what I did. My gait was off after about 16km, as kindly noted by a fellow runner passing by. That's what I get for asking my body to run two half marathons so close together I suppose. I wasn't hurting though, just tired. I wasn't feeling so hot after finishing the three infamous hills all towards the last 5k of the course but Mark ran out to meet me at about 400m remaining and ran with me into the finish. I finished right on goal but naturally I think I could have done better if I hadn't of ran the race the weekend before. Ah well! I was stoked to end the season with a PB and am looking forward to next summer (full marathon? Half Ironman? ;)). I really can't complain about beating last year's time by 12.5 minutes, and I look forward to demolishing that time next year.

Now it's time to plan a winter of strength training and endurance building!
SO far this week, doing well taking a rest...

MON - off
TUES - off
WED - 30k recovery ride w/ Mark