Divas Half Marathon Recap – Spoiler Alert…New PR!

Well I am back from a rather long, fun filled weekend! Hope you all had good times as well. I am here to recap my experience running the Divas Half Marathon on Sunday! What a lovely time it was despite fighting a few obstacles I made it through! And hello, yet another shiny PR is always the icing on the cake. But let’s backtrack a bit!

So my running bestie Tracy and I took the road trip down to Galveston for a long weekend getaway. We got an amazing condo via AirBnB right on the beach with awesome ocean views. I am loving all of the beach inspired décor inside as well. It was so cute and cozy and just perfect for staying a few days. We enjoyed the kitchen too…bought some groceries and did some cooking. Best way to save money on a trip hands down. We went to dinner a couple times but made breakfast and lunch in the condo. Win win situation.

Beach chillin’.

Saturday we made our way to the health and fitness boutique to get our race swag. The boutique itself was rather small so we were in and out of there. But I absolutely loved all of the sweet swag we got and of course all things pink just makes my soul happy. As some of you also know I am the official 2017 TX ambassador for this race series so I was proud to be there and represent.

Race morning! It was super windy at the start, with winds gusting 30+ miles an hour and a cool breeze coming off of the ocean. I didn’t mind it because honestly I race better with a little less humidity. So despite the wind, we got lucky with the temps! Hey, super early start really helps too as there was plenty of cloud cover.

So since I have a 50 mile race coming up right around the corner I did not quite taper for this race, instead kept my mileage fairly high. I’ve been running 70-80 mile weeks consistently in training for this ultra. So I kind of just decided to run this one as a fun run type race and as part of my pre birthday festivities. But as some of you know one of the advantages to upping your miles can be that it can make you a tad faster! I sort of ran this race by feel and was clocking 7 minute miles for most of the way through. It has been a minute since I’ve been able to hold that pace for so long! I felt so incredibly strong during this race, mentally and physically. Despite the crazy winds that I was literally pushing against in the back half I made it through. With a shiny beautiful PR of 1:42:10. My 32nd 13.1 and also my fastest ever half marathon! I placed 2nd in my age group out of 178 women and 8th overall out of 1,288. You can’t beat a fairly small race but I have to say that hard work definitely pays off.