My Second Half Marathon - OC

13.1 miles... I. Did. It. (again) ! This is such a huge accomplishment coming from someone who didn't know how to run a year ago. I was never a runner and always "thought" I could only run short distances because I got severe shin splints. Well after some training, motivation, and running buddies, it was possible! You can read about my first half marathon here, but here is all the info on my second half:

I signed up late because I was honestly debating and going back and forth with the idea of running this race. I wanted to run it with my friends & wanted to continue to go for my beach cities medal (run HB, OC, and LB, consecutively), however, after my HB half, I was iffy as to whether or not I actually enjoyed running races. So while I juggled the idea of running the OC half, I didn't stick to a training schedule and almost exclusively only ran one day a week, on the weekend for my long runs. Each weekend, me and my friend would get in a long run and worked up to a 12 mile run over the course of several weeks. After we did our 10 miler, I signed up for the race. I felt good. Really good. We were going way faster during these long runs than our previous training runs we did for our HB half. So naturally, I figured that I would set a new personal record and everything would be awesome ...... WRONG!

Mile 1 & 2, side aches. Miles 3, 4, 5, & 6, extremely tired legs. Miles 7, 8, & part of 9, I felt okay going at my established pace (which was slower than I anticipated). Miles 10 & 11, slow uphills where I felt exhausted, legs were gonna fall off, body aches, etc (I will admit it, I walked for about 20 seconds uphill). The last mile I picked up the pace to get myself to the finish line.... For. The. Free. MASSAGE!! That was the best part =)

I think this race was more mentally tough on me than the previous one. I don't think I'm quite there yet with my mental focus. Now I need to figure out how to mentally get myself focused and into the race for the Long Beach in October! I guess I have awhile so I should be okay? haha... Here are my results. 1:58:05 (about 3 minutes slower than my first race)

Here are some pictures from race day.