Finished the King Crab-Nut Job-Balti-moron-athon Challenges

It's been a while since I blogged. It's been a busy spring, summer, and fall running with Athletes Serving Athletes, and doing some running on my own as well.  I decided pretty early on that I wasn't going to run another marathon in 2016.  I did, however, decide to do the Balti-moron-athon challenge which was running the 5k and half-marathon on the same day.  I had also signed up for the 2017 DC Rock n Roll marathon.

The Balti-moron-athon was the completion of the King Crab Challenge (running the Frederick half and Baltimore half or full marathons) which got me a fleece blanket.  This was the first time I got 4 medals and a fleece blanket in the same day. 

The 5k was the first race of the morning.  It was a chilly 45 degrees at the start my plan was to try and run easy so I had a lot of energy for the half.  I started off well running well within myself for the mile and a half.  I was feeling pretty good and the next mile and a half was downhill so I sped up and ran the 3rd mile in 7:38 and finished in 26:44.  I was running with my friends Tom, Irma, and Nicole, all of whom did their best to keep me in check.  I had a crazy reach goal that I wasn't sure I could muster which was to run both the 5K in under 27 minutes and the half in under 2 hours.

Unfortunately for me the half marathon did not go quite as planned.  I ran with another friend Kathleen and we were both struggling up the hills, I used too much energy in the 5k and my legs were feeling the hills.  It started to get a little warm out by mile 6 or 7 and at that point I knew the sub 2 was out of sight.  I finished the half in 2:16:56 and I wasn't too upset with the time knowing what I used to get the sub 27.  If I were to do this again I would definitely train more like a marathon with some speed work mixed in.  In the end I finished 16.2 miles in under 3 hours which was good for me. I also got a cold the day after the races and have been fighting it ever since. Here is a picture of me with the 4 medals I got.

My next race is the Bay Bridge 10K with ASA.  Should be  a fun time as always.

I'm going to start training for the Rock n Roll DC marathon again starting on November 7th.  I'll be using the Hal Higdon intermediate 2 training program.  I've put the schedule in Final Surge which will notify me about upcoming workouts.  The program will be 5 days of running, 1 day of either strength training or cross training and one day of rest.  The big change will be the medium long distance run on Saturday and the long run on Sunday.

Hopefully I can keep the training up throughout the winter.

Keep on runnin'