You know you're a runner . . . (Part2)

When you decide to celebrate your birthday by signing up for a relatively expensive half marathon that's held right on your birthday. 

Tons of my non running friends thought I was crazy. Now I'm starting to think maybe I was out of my mind. It was super great to sign up for it in November thinking I was going to beast training and set a super speedy PR. 

Nothing like a shiny medal to say happy birthday. Even better that it spins! 

But then Thanksgiving and finals rolled around where I did zero running. Now I'm having serious misgivings about the race. Maybe I'll end up being slower than my very first half and end up ruining the whole day with a bad race experience. 

But I'm hoping that I can at least PR even by a little bit. All I have to do is keep a faster than 9:40 pace. Easy, right? One thing that's totally great about this race is that it should be mostly flat at sea level elevation. My other races were in upstate NY and had tons of rolling hills. 

One thing that I am worried about is the heat. I know that it's crazy complaining about it being too hot in the middle of January. But I've noticed that it's actually quite hot around the time that I'd probably be starting. Hopefully, if I rein myself in from starting off too fast in the beginning, a PR is attainable despite the heat. 

Dante is totally telling me, "Please woman, you can totally PR. Stop freaking out." Or he's asking for personal space. I like to think it's the former. 

Those are my goals for the half. Hopefully, when I feel like giving up, I'll remember how I told everyone who reads my blog that I can PR. 

Now comes the main reason for this post. I wanted to get everyone's opinion about tapering. The race is this Sunday. And my last long was the weekend before last. I actually didn't run last weekend, because I didn't feel like it. Also, I could sort of feel a beginning of shin splints coming on and didn't want to chance an injury so close to the race. 

This is what i did instead of running. I tortured my dog and forced it to hang out with me. 

But now I have no idea what to do about the rest of the week. Today, I covered 4.6 miles at a relaxed pace. But now I feel like maybe I should have ran faster or longer. 

Should I squeeze in a speed workout? Should I cover 4 miles? 5 miles? Maybe 6, 7 or even 8? And what should I do on Friday and Sat? Should my last run be on Friday? Or should I rest Friday and go for a really relaxed run on Sat? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks and I hope everyone had a great start to their week!

Random Things Thursday/Saturday Morning at 1:30AM

So as you can probably see, I've been playing around with the template for my blog a lot. So my random things Thursday is quite overdue.

1. Thanks to everyone who commented about the whole birthday race thing. 
So, I just did it. I registered.

I am still cringing a little thinking about the price. 

Now I will promptly try to erase the expensiveness of the race from my memory. And now there's this additional pressure to not walk and keep my pace. I better PR on my birthday after all this. And the money too.

2. What do you think about my new template?
I've been playing with the template a lot. What took a long time was that I'd find a good template that I wanted to start out with. Then, I had to edit it for hours and hours to make it fit my needs more. In retrospect, I should have taken a basic web design course during my undergrad years since it's handy. But I took the hard way and edited it . . . very painfully. One of the main reasons I chose chemical engineering was that no advance physics or programming course was required. Little did I know that Physical Chemistry is Quantum Mechanics in disguise! It was a bad year full of wave functions and particles in boxes.

3. Sort of freaking out about the 5K tomorrow
I am totally not ready. I haven't done nearly enough speed work. I'm just trying to tell myself that it's all about enjoying myself.

Wild and fun. Gotta remember that. 

4. Weird injury in my Achilles tendon area
The reason I took such a long break from running (my last run was on Monday) was that I developed this weird pain in my Achilles tendon area. I don't know why. It just started hurting one day after class. I am not sure if it's running related. It happened randomly on Wednesday so about 48 hours after my last run. Regardless, I've been resting it so I hope it feels better for the 5K.

This guy died from getting shot in the Achilles. And actually had the tendon  named after him. Troy wasn't the best movie, but very easy on the eye. 

5. I can't believe I just spent like 85 dollars in one shot!! 

It will all be worth it when I PR on my birthday. As you can see, I'm still shell shocked about the whole paying for an expensive race thing. I think part of it is that I've only been running small local races that are <$40. So now I shall go on a diet to save money. I spend so much money on snacks, it's not even funny. Cutting off snacks will make me healthier. Considering I probably spend about <$20 on sweets per week, cutting them out for like a month will pay for the race. 

And what's on you guys's thoughts? Good luck to everyone who's racing! And for the rest of you who aren't, I hope you get in a good run or two.