So....Long Island

I've been a terrible blogger lately, I know. I had been writing about this big half marathon on May 1st (hadn't I?) And here it is, Cinco de Mayo aka Eat Guacamole Until You're Sick-Day, and I haven't even written up the briefest of recaps!

I had heard mixed things about the LI Half. Some people said that the full course was really boring, with little crowd support. Some people said the half showed the ugliest parts of Long Island. Overall, I liked the race. It's a little hard to get to from where I live, but I thought overall the course was scenic enough. The crowd support was fine--but I felt like a lot of the time people were on the side of the road just looking for THEIR runner. So you'd pass by a large group of people that were totally silent. Not even clapping. Yeessshh. Although I must say seeing a priest in his full "outfit" on the side of the road giving high fives was pretty entertaining. Also, I kind of love how smaller races have people physically handing you a cup of water or Gatorade.

I had also heard the course was really flat. Well....it IS....except for the huge hill at mile 9.5 which is part of some highway or expressway. That totally caught me off guard and since I was already feeling fatigued at this point, I was a bit defeated.

As you can probably tell by my lack of mentioning it, I did not PR, although I ran my second fastest time, so that was definitely a bright point. There was no real reason though, I should have been able to. The weather was perfect for the most part, and after some leg cramps left at mile 3 I felt pretty good. Maybe I could have fueled a little more midrace? It was obvious from my extremely erratic splits (9:30-10:05) it just wasn't in the cards. And that is okay.

I thought I would have disappointed a lot of people that day, but as I was struggling through mile 10-11 (once I knew there was no way sub 2:07 was in my sights) I tried to shift my focus. I ran a half marathon #8 today, and that alone is something I can be proud of.