St. Jude Memphis Marathon weekend

So happy that the St. Jude half marathon week is here. I have been looking forward to running the race for so many months. I have already done three half marathons this year and was hoping for a personal record with this race to cap off a great year of progress. I started working with my running coach, Lesley, around the first of the year. I could not do anything she had set up for me to do. I started out way too ambitious. I got in a rhythm and became very dedicated to my schedule and my workouts. I was frustrated at first with my lack of progress and realized it would take some time to get a good base of running under my belt. I did the Germantown Half Marathon in March. Mentally it was not a good race. I did the St. Jude Country Music Half Marathon at the end of April. It was a very challenging course with lots of hills and high temps, but I pushed through it and did well. I then started the Memphis Runners Road Race series in July and built my way up through the 5k, 5 miler, 10k and 10 miler and was thrilled to finish the half marathon in early November at 2:06. My best ever time in a half marathon is 2:05 and that was many years ago. I got my sights set on a PR for St. Jude but the weather had different ideas. The temps at the starting line for my November race were in the mid 30's while at the St. Jude Memphis race it was nearly 60 degrees. That really does make a difference physically and mentally. I pushed through glad to see Gary along the way several times as he was one of the official Race Crew members. He met me at mile 12 and ran me into the finish line. I was so happy to have him with me for the last mile because it was getting hot and I was certainly tired. I finished in 2:13 which was slower than my goal, but I felt like I had really made great progress throughout 2012.

Now just working through what I want to do in 2013. I want to take December to really cross-train and keep up some basic running and then figure out for January where I want to be and where I want to race. Hoping for a second year of great results!

I have no pictures from the race unfortunately of myself! There are race photographers but I did not really want to order any of the shots they had. I don't run with a phone or an ipod so I did not get any finish line pictures. Oh well!! Just picture a tired runner ready to rest!! :)