Mercedes Half Marathon

Needless to say, my expectations are not being met. The Mercedes half mary was essentially a consolation prize when I pulled out of the Mardi Gras marathon. Then I made Mercedes a warmup race to the ING half. Now, it seems I am limping into the race really wondering if I should even risk it. I can't seem to catch a break right now. My lower body is not responding like I need it to at this juncture.

I feel like I have put in the work. I have scaled back my training at times when I felt injuries. I am stretching more than I ever have before. I am focusing on my diet and refueling after long runs. I cut out spin class after wondering if that was the problem. Bottomline...I am not being dumb about training, I am making the right decisions....just not getting desired results.

A month ago I was peaking in training. I was knocking off mile repeats at new personal bests. I was running times that I haven't seen since high school. Now I am cautious on each run. And it is infuriating me. Granted it is the beginning of the season but I want to be injury free all season. No room for error!.

So Mercedes is less than 10 days away and I am shifting my focus to mentally prepare. I only have a few more runs and then it is race day. Again, my goal is to go out easy and try to have fun in preparation for a long season.

I will discuss race strategy later but right now, I am setting my goal as a sub 2 hours half. I know I can easily do that on training runs but I need to treat the run like a training day...plus I have always heard this course was much more challenging than it looks.

Here is the course profile: