Well, it is hard to believe that I had my last run today before I run the Seashore Half Marathon in Long Beach!!! I have a really good friend who always asks me, "Are you ready for your race?", a couple days before an event. And most often I reply with a somewhat hesitant and less than enthusiastic, "I think so..."! And that is genuinely how I feel.
I mean, I really do not know that I am ever ready for a race until I start running. This isn't my first Half Marathon, but it is the first that I have actually trained for. I am really hoping that I complete the race in under two hours... but to be honest, I would be happy as long as I beat my 2:13:00 record from the Tinker Bell Half Marathon I ran in January.
All I can tell you is that I am ABSOLUTELY excited to spend tomorrow night and Saturday morning/ afternoon with one of my best friends in the whole wide world, Rachel Davis. She lives only a few minutes from the race event, so she is graciously hosting me for the evening. I never get to spend much quality time with her, so I am REALLY looking forward to spending almost a complete 24 hours with her.
So today was a pretty good day. I started with a delicious bowl of Kashi/Cheerio cereal, almonds and half a banana. This is what I usually have on my Thursday and Friday morning drives to work. The trick is, I eat the first half of the banana before I leave the house :) I enjoyed this with a big glass of. This is one of my favorites drinks right now. Especially since I apparently gave up drinking coffee! That right, I haven't had a single drop of coffee in almost two weeks. It's amazing how easy it is to give something up when you're really not trying... However, I think I might have to break this to make it through the ENTIRE day on Saturday... but we'll see :)
OK. So it wasn't a huge variation from my regular meals, but I did make it a little different :)
In the afternoon, I had some grapes and a little while later I had some celery and peanut butter. One of my favorite guilty pleasures. On my way to my run I had myself some "overnight oats". I had a 1/3 cup of oats, 1/4 cup of almond milk, 1/4 cup of blueberries and a tablespoon of honey. I put them all together last night and let them sit. I had seen recipes for this before, but I did not believe that it was going to taste so good! I think this is officially going to be my new favorite snack. It gave the oats so much more flavor, and I feel like it kept me fuller longer. I'm going to continue to keep looking for fun combos to try :).
Dinner was a carbo-loading feast!!! I had a small piece of my vegetarian lasagna that my mom froze from my birthday (still really delicious) and add a half a cup more of pasta to add some base and half of a vegetarian sausage for protein. I also made a small spinach, zucchini and tomato salad to accompany it with. Sorry I didn't take a picture, but I was STARVING when I got home. I finished the night with a Trader Joe's Caribbean Fruit Floe Popsicle.
For my run, I had only planned on running the 5 mile loop at Balboa Park, but due to a grave error in judgment, I ended up running a little more than that :/ I'm really hoping that I do not pay for my mistake come race day, but I have a feeling that i am going to be OK.
This run was a little rough for me and I'm not quite sure why. I have a theory that I am just not an evening exerciser. By the time I get to my work out, I am so tired, and I feel so weighed down by everything that I have eaten so I feel like I do not have as much push as I do when I get up and complete my run first thing in the morning.
Either way, I finished my run at just under 5.2 miles and finished it in 46:16. So, once again, even though I felt like I was running through mud, I was still keeping a 9 minute mile pace. This is what I am aiming for on race day (and you're usually at least 15 seconds faster per mile on race day)... So I guess you could say that
I AM READY FOR MY RUN!!!
I most likely wont be able to post tomorrow, so I will see you at the finish line :)
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