Halloween Half Marathon, Miami Beach - October 25, 2014

I spent the entire month of September slacking off in the running department. I told myself that it was to help recover from the nasty feet injuries that I had been dealing with for almost the entire past year, but that's not true. I kind of talked myself into thinking that I couldn't find the time to go out for a run with my hectic new schedule of teaching in the evenings, but that's not true either. I could have gotten up in the morning to run if I had really wanted to. I forced myself to go to the gym to try to keep up my cardio, but in the end, I realize that it was more of just going through the motions, rather than pushing myself. The fact, plain and simple is that I was feeling pretty l-a-z-y during the month of September, and I just didn't wanna.

But then, just as I was emerging from my lazy-funk, I suddenly lost my voice. Normally laryngitis wouldn't be a big deal, but it developed into something more. 3 days later, not only did I no longer have a voice, but I was starting to audibly wheeze from somewhere in my throat. Throat wheezing is nowhere near as scary as bronchial wheezing so I dismissed the symptoms as just some fluke allergy issue.

getting ready

But the next day, I developed a cough. A deep dry cough that was as unproductive as congress is frequently proving to be. I sounded like a child with whooping cough, and I couldn't catch my breath. I rushed to the emergency room, where it was discovered (after a few consecutive albuterol nebulizer treatments) that I was in fact having a horrible acute asthma attack. It took me almost a week and a half to recover and feel that I could breath sufficiently without the help of pharmaceuticals.


When this past weekend rolled around, and it was time for the Halloween half marathon in Miami Beach, I knew that I would really have to focus and hold it together just to finish upright, but I also didn't want to take a DNS (did not start) on this race.

with Brina and Seth, my running and travel buds

In some respects, I feel like I really surprised myself, yet in other ways I really felt like I let myself down. For example, I am surprised that I got out there and finished in a decent time considering that I had a fluke respiratory issue in the 2 weeks leading up to the race... and on the other hand, I feel like I let myself down by only being able to run my intervals for the first 6.5 miles and then choosing to walk the rest. In some ways I was surprised that I could make it 6.5 miles doing my intervals in the first place, and then I felt let down that my pace was horrendously slow.

I love having a Garmin to be able to really keep myself in check and ensure that I am staying on pace, but it can be a double edged sword... something that I realized at this race.

My friends Vikki and Richard were completing their first halfs

While its great to keep yourself on track for pace, there is such thing as being too clock and pace obsessed.  I wouldn't say that its a debilitating obsession or anything, but it is definitely something I am concerned about. Whereas earlier in my running half marathons journey I might have been less concerned with the pace if I was having an off day, at the Halloween race, it was clear that not making my interval times (for legitimate reasons like coughing up small children from my injured lungs), was just another reason to get down on myself and start with the negative self-talk.

Gone seem to be the days where I just focused on the running and the journey of it all, rather than the finish.

For this reason, in this post, I wont be including my finish time or my place like I normally would. I'll just say that I finished faster than my first half marathon, but not by much. And that time's not bad considering how under-trained I was... something I am not so proud of.

What I can say about the course is that it was a million times better than the course for the same race as last year. The race started at Jungle Island where the parking was a nightmare. I needed the rest room before the race, and because we had difficulty parking and had to walk to the port-o-lets, we actually arrived back at the start line after the gun had already gone off. The course took us up and over the Macarthur Causeway for approximately 4 miles and into South Miami beach where we ran through South Point Park. From there we traveled approximately 4 miles along Ocean Drive to  Lummus Park and along the boardwalk to a turnaround point where we then looped back to the finish. While It was considerably a better course than last year's with no "hardpacked sand" to run along, we spent the majority of the race running on bricks and concrete. Again, I loved being on the boardwalk but the boards get incredibly slick from the humidity and dew, and I am afraid to fall on my face.

Because most of the race is off of pavement, the jury is still out as to whether I will run this race again next year. But they do have awesome finishers medals, and it is an opportunity to dress up for Halloween and run a race.

What do you think of my lady bug costume?

Half Marathon 28 complete!