The Final Week... and some Goal Updates

It's been awhile since my last post, and sadly, things have been hectic - though I do have a running list of all of the Vegan experiences I've had these past weeks, including several more restaurant reviews: La Loma (on Capitol Hill, Mass. Ave.); Argonaut (H St. NE, Atlas District); Happy Hours/Dinners at Bars including Chef Geoff's Downtown, Laughing Man Tavern, and Fado Irish Pub; Pho Bar and Grill (H St. NE, Atlas District) vs. Pho 14 (Columbia Heights); Chinese/Thai take out both in DC and VA.


This will all happen this week, as it is my final week of Veganism, as far as this Lentan challenge goes.


For now, I have some updates/reports regarding Goals I listed when I started this blog.


1)  Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon, DC, March 17, 2012:


GOALS SET AS:

• My reach goal is to break 2 hours (chip time).
• My "happy with it" goal is to PR (my lifetime PR was over a decade ago and part of a full marathon, but it was a 2:13).
• My "better than nothing; would be really disappointed if failed" goal is to finish faster and feeling better than the I did after the Nike Women's Half Marathon in October 2011 (2:22 and I felt pretty terrible both during and afterwards).

REPORT:

My finishing chip time was 2:09:53.  This means I did not hit my reach goal, but did achieve my "happy with it" goal.  Therefore, I am happy with it.

The race itself didn't feel that great for me, physically.  I'd accidentally taken a 2-week full taper.  This was definitely NOT a race where I negative split.  And I really lost steam at mile 11.  I think the reason I was most disappointed though was that the long runs I'd done all averaged about 9-15 seconds faster than I ended up averaging to finish the half.  Since my reach goal required a 9:04-minute mile, and I ended up pacing a 9:54-minute mile, even though I am "happy with it," it left me with an itch to keep going (*see #3 below).

2) Cherry Blossom Ten Miler, DC, April 1, 2012:

GOALS SET AS:

"2012 Goal: I'd like this to feel fantastic, as an extension of my half marathon training.  It's also on my birthday (April Fools' Day, because my life's a joke, har har), and it just needs to not be a constant decline each year. Finish time goal somewhere between 1:30 and 1:35."

REPORT:

Officially, my finishing chip time was 1:45:05.  I'm going ahead and calling it a 1:39:35, and here is why: I required that myself and my run-buddy stop at a set of a porta-johns.  We ended up being there for over 5 minutes -- we stood for a little bit, and then she checked her watch to note the time, and then when we were finally out of the line and out of the johns, and back on the race, it was 5 minutes passed when she last checked -- and I'm calling that a total stop time of 5:30 that would otherwise not have been a stop.  (Oh, and of course, and I had feared this would happen, about a half-mile later, we came upon a HUGE row of porta-johns, as opposed to the three we'd stopped at... without a line.  Of course.)  So if I call it a 1:39:35, I still did not reach my time goal and paced slower than the Half Marathon two weeks prior.  So as far as a time goal, I failed.

Cherry Blossom did not feel very good for me, but it did not feel terrible either, and there was no moment I thought "I cannot finish this."  And it's definitely my personal best Cherry Blossom, to erase the last two years of unpreparedness and injury.  In fact, at home, I even put this year's medal on top of/over the medal from 2010.

So I guess I would similarly qualify this one was "happy with it."

3)  *From Rock n Roll, and now from Cherry Blossom, I still need to hit my 9-minute pace goal, but also decided to make an overall life goal of an 8-minute pace for a half marathon.  But it is a life goal.  It will take time and proper training.  This was about 3 hours after I'd sworn off running that I was like "no, make a real goal for life."  Though for now, I'm taking a race break, and focusing back on general fitness and working that into my daily life.