The New York City Half Marathon website tells me there are 26 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes left until race time. \u00a0That makes me more than a little nervous. \u00a0Twenty six days is a lot of time for some things, but when preparing for a half marathon it doesn’t seem like much time at all. \u00a0In January my focus was just increasing my mileage after taking December off. \u00a0But now when I run my mind wanders to times. \u00a0How fast do I want to do this race? \u00a0Do I want to beat my best time of 2:04:50? \u00a0That was on a flat course and the first half of the NYC race will be in hilly Central Park. \u00a0And the fact is I don’t seem to be getting any faster. \u00a0In fact I think I might be getting slower. \u00a0I know my endurance is better than last fall but my speed is not. \u00a0Last week I did start some speed intervals, but even a burst of speed over 200m somehow manages to make everything from my lungs to my stomach to my muscles feel miserable. \u00a0To be blunt, speed intervals suck any of the fun out of running for me. \u00a0Given the choice of a very long run or a short run with intervals I will always choose the first option.<\/p>\n
So I know speed is not my strength, but does that give me an excuse to not go for a personal best? \u00a0If I am not aiming for a P.B. am I just cheating myself out of accomplishing something difficult? \u00a0When I ask that question I remind myself that just running 21.1, not to mention all the prep that goes into it, is difficult in itself. \u00a0So I am thinking that maybe when I run New York I will aim for a good time, one I can be proud of (maybe 2:12 or under?) but allow myself to experience the fun of the race. \u00a0I will be seeing NYC for the first time and I will be running a route that will take me past so many famous landmarks. \u00a0Maybe I should stop for a picture or two or slow down to take in the fact that I, a former non-runner, am running a route many would envy experiencing. \u00a0I think in the end that this race may not be about the final time, but as they say, more about the journey itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The New York City Half Marathon website tells me there are 26 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes left until race time. \u00a0That makes me more than a little nervous. \u00a0Twenty six days is a lot of time for some things, but when preparing for a half marathon it doesn’t seem like much time at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3amQ2-19","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}