Michael & Liz are Bloggable

It has been a couple weeks now, but I haven't blogged about the RunRaleigh Half Marathon I ran in. It was on April 15th, just under 2 weeks after Cole was born. I had trained hard early in the year, but hadn't done much running after he was born and wasn't expecting much from this race. My previous personal record in the half was 1:35:08, and my plan for this run was to hit between 1:40 and 1:45. It didn't quite pan out the way I wanted it to. The first mile I ran at a 7:15 minute per mile pace, and decided just to keep going with that, and ended up hitting a 1:35:29. I missed my PR by 21 seconds!! ARG!!!  Here are the stats I recorded on my Garmin:


I ran the Raleigh Rocks Half Marathon last year, and I have to say, RunRaleigh blew Raleigh Rocks away. They did everything better. The course was much better in that it covered much more distance and didn't loop back on itself multiple times like Raleigh Rocks does. The medals at the end and the t-shirt the race provided were both far better. I also felt like it was much more organized. The only downside was that there was a storm the night before and it blew away all the mile markers.

So what race is next? This Saturday I am running the New River Marathon. It should be quite an experience since it's way out in the mountains of North Carolina. RunRaleigh had 373 feet of elevation gain, but the New River Marathon has 1732 feet of elevation gain. I can't imagine how difficult it is going to be. What am I hoping to run? I guess if I were aiming for a time, it would be 4 hours or under, but I think that may be a little ambitious. My running plan is to go out comfortably, drink lots of water, and enjoy the scenery. However long it takes me, I really won't care as long as I don't completely tank, like running it in 5 hours or more.