South Shore 1/2 Marathon

Last weekend I decided to do the South Shore 1/2 marathon as part of my training. I was planning to do a 90 minute training run that day anyway, and the thought of running with large herds of people sounded more appealing than running alone. Needless to say I was pretty relaxed as I planned on running easy. It was kind of nice to show up at a race, sit back and spectate while registering and running. I ran with my friend Jodi (who found out she is just a bit faster than she thought that day...). The plan was just to hold around 7:30/mile pace for the entire run. Jodi had averaged 7:22/mile pace last year and she just wanted to have a good race. We started out running and were consistently and easily between 7:00/mile and 7:30/mile. Jodi was doing awesome! She was even talking to me. Therefore, at the 1/2 way point (which was also the turn around), we could see all of the women ahead of us. Jodi counted and mentioned that we were numbers 11 & 12. Seeing how good she was looking I encouraged her to push the pace a bit more and try to get top 10. She was agreeable, so we decided to pick it up a bit. The last 4 miles we were sub 7's. Jodi totally smoked it and I cheered her into the finish line. She PR'ed that day by 4-5 minutes and placed 9th OA! I was pleased with my training run (although it was a bit faster than what I had planned) as I was within 1.5 minutes of my PR. I believe Jodi and I can both run much faster as we were quite social the first 6-7 miles of the race. I'm looking forward to racing the Oshkosh 1/2 marathon in a couple of weeks. It's gonna be a fast one!