Half Marathon Report

On Sunday, January 13, I ran the Half Marathon in Houston. The start was pretty chilly, probably about 47 degrees. I ran in shorts with a long-sleeve performance shirt and a t-shirt over that. I started out in the second wave, which got going at 7:10 am. The course was really great. The crowd was huge, of course. It was pretty hard to navigate through the people at the beginning. I stayed on the left side of the road the whole time and managed to stay out of the thick groups. I managed to keep about a 10:45 pace for the first 9 miles. Then I started getting really sluggish and I ended up finishing in 2:27:02. The last 4 miles were really slow, about a 12:20 pace. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't faster. My first half was 2:22. My training wasn't very consistent for the last month, however. Also, I didn't eat very well the day before and I think that hurt me in the endurance part of the race.
Now I'm starting the training all over so I can improve my performance in my next half, which will be April 6. I'm going to use Hal Higdon's Intermediate Half training plan, which is designed to improve times. When I finish in April, I'm going to start Higdon's Personal best plan, which is a combination Spring Training/ Marathon training plan. I hope to finally incorporate strength training into my workouts next week. I'm also working on a plan to cut out Dr. Pepper from my diet! I am going to need to lose weight in order to really improve my speed.