We meet again, Baltimore.

The past two weeks have not been great in terms of training (or blogging). After the Metric Marathon on October 2, I came down with a pretty bad cold that made it hard to run or get to the gym. Then, while still dealing with the cold, I took a trip to CT for my seminary reunion and RI for work. I am usually good about exercising while travelling, but between the cold and a packed schedule, I did not work out at all. I got back to MD in the wee hours of last Thursday morning having not worked out in 7 days or run in 11. By that point, I was in starting to panic about my upcoming races: the Baltimore Half-Marathon on 10/15 and NYC on 11/6.

Thursday evening, I decided to ease back into working out by going to yoga. That felt great and reminded me that I love going to the gym. Still when I finished, I thought "I am running a half-marathon in 2 days and a full marathon in 3 weeks. Just doing yoga will not get me there." Fortunately, my gym buddy (and recent marathon survivor!) Jen was available for an easy Friday morning run to help me get further back into my routine. After that, I went to my first Group Power class in over a week. Knowing I had a race the next morning, I took it semi-easy on the weights. I would have been fine, had the instructor not swapped out our regular squat routine for a different (and much harder) one. The weight I had on my bar was light for our normal routine, but way too heavy for the new one. I should have paused and scaled back, but I chose to push through... and paid for it the next day.

I woke up Saturday morning (aka: race day) to serious soreness in my quads and glutes. I felt like I had run a half-marathon before I ever got to the starting line! I took some Tylenol and hoped that I would feel better once I got moving. My ambitious goal for the race was a 2:15 finish. I had doubts about achieving that, as Baltimore is a hard and hilly race. Even if I couldn't achieve 2:15, I felt fairly confident that I could beat my previous half-marathon PR of 2:17.

Fortunately, my legs did feel better once I got going, though the soreness never went away entirely. Baltimore was both as fun and as hard as I remembered from 2010. I knew quite a few people running the race, but nobody running my pace, so I was on my own most of the morning. I found it challenging to keep pushing myself without any motivation or distraction from a running buddy. Thankfully, the crowds were great and I ran into two different sets of friends at two particularly difficult moments. In mile 8, I had a brief but pleasantly distracting chat with two friends from the Striders' marathon training. Then, just before mile 10, I spotted my good friends Nancy and Jessie in the crowd of spectators. I didn't have time to stop and chat, but they were kind enough to accept my sweaty hugs.

I hit mile 10, which is where the hills finally relent, at almost exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes. Thus, I knew I would need to speed up from 10:15-10:30 minute miles to 10-minute miles or less in order to hit 2:15. I had my doubts, but I knew I would regret it if I didn't try. According to Nike+, I ran mile 11 in 9:35, but then slowed back to 10:39 for mile 12. I remember that being a tough moment. Thankfully, the last mile of Baltimore goes downhill through a crowd of cheering spectators. I don't care how tired you are, its hard to slow down when you have a 3-deep throng of people yelling "Almost there!" and "Do it for Baltimore!" I ran the last mile in 9:15 and crossed the finish line with an official time of 2:16:31. Not the 2:15 I hoped for, but still a PR and a full 10:01 faster than last year's time of 2:26:32. I was very pleased.

Not pictured: my huge smile. 

Pretty much the second I stopped running, the soreness came back with a vengeance. Within an hour, walking was a challenge and doing things like standing up and taking stairs was excruciating. For the remainder of Saturday and all of Sunday, Advil and stretching were my new best friends. Today, though, I feel almost back to normal. By taking it easy on the weights, I was able to get back to my Monday morning Group Power and I'm looking forward to my Tuesday morning run with Jen tomorrow. 20 days to NYC!