Tomorrow is Half Marathon day!

Yippeee! I think. LOL No, actually I'm looking forward to getting this part of the journey done. Because it is all part of the journey, the journey to the LONDON marathon. Yep, I'm going to be hugely proud to have trained and run a half marathon (all going well), but in reality it is one of steps along the way to the huge goal.

I ran 12km on Thursday, I was unsure about doing such a longish run so close to it, but I took it easy, tried to pace it the same as I'll run tomorrow and it was a good run - no soreness, no stiffness, it all felt good, as a confidence booster it was just what I needed.

Today I ran 5km, and again kept it to the pace I want to run tomorrow, and once again it was a great confidence booster - I think I am FINALLY starting to "get" the whole pace thing - for ages everytime I ran I just ran as fast as I could, well not sprinted, hard out, but I had one pace, albeit a pretty slow pace, but one pace, whether it was a long run, a training run, a race, whatever ... one pace. Now, I'm finally getting my brain to feel what my body is doing and what it should be doing and I can run a slower pace when I should, and speed up a bit when I should. I think I'm finally becoming a runner ;)

In other news ... our flights were booked this week - OMG!!! It really is real, for a while I was expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say "Just Kidding! ... boy we sucked you in" ... but having those flights written in black and white, and the too much money (to pay for David's - mine are paid for) come out of the bank account ... yep, Oh. my. gosh. it is really going to happen - very very scary. A big race here is like Wellington where I won the prize - which had about 5,000 people running ... there will be 35,000 in London, pretty uncomprehendable for a girl from little 'ole NZ.

So things to do before we set off - like getting card cut for 40 people for a demonstration I'm doing on Tuesday morning - eeek! I'll feel better if that is done before I leave and one big job is crossed off my list.

Oh - and goals ... I said a couple of months ago when I started training for this half marathon that I didn't care about the time, I just needed to know I could complete a half marathon, whether I ended up walking or whatever - I just needed to finish. Well, a funny thing happened over the training, suddenly I started to believe I could actually run this thing :) ... so time goals ... and copycatting the other running blogs I read - A, B and C.

A = less than 2.10, considering my usual 10km is about 1:03, this would be a bit of a miracle!
B = 2.10-2.15, if it all goes extremely well, I think I can do this - but everything has to go well, right until the very end, and I'm not sure what will happen the last 3-5km, because so far I've run one 18km and that's the longest I've run - so I'm realistic in knowing that it might not all be pretty smelly roses for the whole run ;)
C = 2.15-2.20, okay, biggest thing is I finish, but honestly, I'll be disappointed if I'm slower than 2.20.

So we'll see, I'll update you after its all over!