New Year, New Goals!

Well, it's a new year.

I wasn't planning on drinking much/anything for New Year's, but I went to Goat Island with Burry and some friends and drank a little too much to do my New Years Day 13.1 miles. Oops.
However, with that extra bit of dehydration, I WAS able to hit my New Year's Day goal of 155 lbs. That's right. I DID IT (and today it was 155.8 lbs, so I was only dehydration-cheating a little:P). I can't believe it. I started logging daily the same day I started my official training plan for the half. With training and diet, I've literally run my butt off. It's crazy to think that I haven't been this light since high school (I can't remember my weight before I started packing it on after my knee injury sophomore year).

155 pounds!!! So EXCITING!

I feel like I've lost a good bit of upper body muscle though, so that's one of my goals for the year: to start working on upper body/abs again. Fun times!

I was going to hydrate all day yesterday and do the 13.1 mile long run once I felt hydrated enough, but I never got there. I felt like it was just too big of a risk to do it, so I postponed. It helped that Monday's were my usual long day anyway. I was still a little disappointed I didn't get it in though. Maybe that will motivate me to put the drinks down next year:P

I've earned the 13.1 sticker!

So yeah. Today I ran 13.1 miles. That's ridiculous. I can't believe I've made it to the point where I just went out and ran that much. No music. No people to chat with. Just me running. I feel so accomplished. I'll be honest. When I started training 3 months ago, I really didn't know if I'd be able to do it. And honestly, if it hadn't been for Jen and Lindsey, I probably wouldn't have. Definitely shows you how much a group can help you. I'm also really excited that by my crazy idea to run it, I've convinced them to run their first half-marathons too!

When I set out today, I didn't really have a goal time. I'd decided that I wanted to finish the race with a time of 2:20:00, but that I'd be happy with anything under 2:30:00. Well, I didn't write down the first couple of mile markers, but the first couple of miles felt really slow. When I hit the 3rd mile, I was probably running 11:00-11:15 min/miles. I was kinda depressed about that, but figured it was from the New Years drinking. Then I didn't really check it for a few miles, and when I finally did, I was averaging 10 min/miles. I really thought I'd missed a turn or something, but I knew I was going a lot faster, and I started timing my miles. I even double checked my map when I got back. But I wasn't wrong.

I'd finished in 2:10:48.

WHAT!?! My first ever 13.1 mile time was UNDER my race day goal? How the heck did that happen? Since I just went out like it was a normal run, and was doing it on my own, I'm changing my race day goal to 2:10:00. It's pretty freaking doable. I just found out that there will be pacers for the half too, and there is a 2:00:00 one. I'm going to try to keep up with that group. If I can just start out a little faster, I think I can do it. Or it might kill me. We'll see:D

1,180 calories of pure deliciousness.

After my run, I rewarded myself by replacing 1,180 calories (of my burned 1447 calories) with Zaxby's. I don't remember the last time I've eaten more than a couple fries (literally 2). It was so delicious, but so greasy. After not eating fast food much (other than Subway) the past 3 months, it's kind of disgusting to me now. So weird!

Well, that's about it for today. Other than the fact that I'm STOKED about the whole carbo-loading thing I get to do next week. Since I hit my goal, I'm just maintaining my weight until after the race (After, I might try to lose 5 more lbs, but I'll also be starting to lift again, so I'm not expecting much...bring on the muscle weight!)

-Jess

12 days until the Charleston Half-Marathon

89 days until the Cooper River Bridge Run

BONUS
Here is my first feeble attempt at using the splits function on my watch. I didn't think of it until mile 5, then freaked out when I didn't know what the heck I was doing. It was probably really funny watching me try to figure it out. Also, why didn't I think of using this before!?! (Keep in mind that some places I have to do that whole stoplight thing, which I'm pretty sure happened on mile 9)

Miles 1-5:    10:14 min/mile avg.
Miles 6-7:    10:30 min/mile avg.
Mile 8:         10:13 min/mile
Mile 9:         11:43 min/mile
Miles 10-11:  8:59 min/mile
Mile 12:        9:29 min/mile
Mile 13.1:     9:50 min/mile

Definitely rocked the last few miles. Interesting. I'm definitely going to start timing that more often. I'll worry about time goals more seriously at my next half:)