Today was supposed to be my first half marathon of the 2011 season, the High Cloud Snapple Half Marathon. This race is held on the C&O towpath. I ran the inaugural race last year, and was hoping to make this a yearly event for me. As you might recall from my race report on last year's Snapple half marathon, the race was cold, and after the first half of the race it began snowing. By the end I had icicles hanging off my eye lashes and there was about 2 inches of snow on the towpath. I slowed down in the back half because of the snow and the fear of bad footing. Anyway, on Wednesday this past week, we had about 6-8 inches of snow fall. The schools were closed and power was lost at my office so I had off work. Many people were stranded in the streets as the snow was coming down so fast, the plows could not keep up. With all this snow, I was concerned about them postponing the race until the towpath cleared up. Well, they did not. In fact, the night before the race, I got an e-mail stating that the race was on, and runners should run the race at their own risk. The subject of the e-mail I received was High Cloud Half Marathon – VERY CHALLENGING COURSE. Yikes. The body of the e-mail stated there were 6 inches of snow on the towpath, and with the warmer temperatures, there was much ice and slush and the occasional down tree limb. The temperature at the start of the race was to be in the upper 20, so all that slush should freeze, and runners need to be careful of slipping or twisting ankles. The e-mail ended with some talk of personal safety, and that runners need to use their best judgment about whether to run or not.
I was torn. I wanted to do the race, but I definitely did not want to hurt myself. This was never to be a goal race for me. I was using it as a measure of my fitness. My goal race is at the end of March, and I definitely did not want to hurt myself in the frozen slush. So I decided not to run the race. If I had trail shoes, I may have considered it. If it was a goal race, I may have considered it. But it was not worth the risk of injury, since the Sun Trust race is only 8 weeks away. As soon as I made the decision not run, I felt like a wimp.
So instead of running the race, I ran a 13.5 mile training run. I went at my typical training pace, and had a really good run. I was cold, but did not have many problems. I now have 8 weeks until the Sun Trust Half Marathon at the end of March. After that I have the Cherry Blossom 10-miler the next weekend. I need to keep myself healthy and uninjured. I made the right decision to not run that race.
For the next eight weeks, I'm going to add some speed work into my training. I plan to do some track work one day a week and a good tempo run one day a week. I hope to continue to put in 40 miles a week through the 8-week period (I've been around 40miles/week for the last 8 weeks). I'll be posting more through this training to let you know how it goes!!
