Last year I raced my first ever half marathon at the Virginia Beach Rock n’ Roll Half over Labor Day weekend. It was AWESOME. I love the distance soo much, it may be my favorite. I was hoping for a sub-2 hour time and came in a 2:00:32. I actually fell flat on my face at mile 10 and cut up my hand and knee and lost some time there (I am not the most coordinated person at times) and if that hadn’t happened I’m sure I would have come in under 2:00. It was still a great race, though – despite missing my time goal, the extreme heat, and making a fool of myself at mile 10. Anyway, I’ve run two other halves since then and beat my PR in May at the Pacers Half, coming in at 1:55:47. I signed up for this year’s VA Beach Half this past winter with the hopes of improving my time, having a blast and NOT falling on my face.
Well, things have changed since then – I am pregnant! I’m still signed up for this race and will be in VA Beach for it and all along through this pregnancy have been planning to just see how I feel on race day and do whatever pace/distance feels right that morning. That is my plan even still. My goals for the race remain pretty much the same with the exception of improving my time. I want to (1) have fun, (2) not fall flat on my face and (3) set a PR of sorts because this will be my first time participating in a race with a baby in my belly.
The only thing is that I have not been consistent with my running, especially over the last month. I was running 10-14 mile long runs on the weekends until 2 weeks ago. The past 2 weekends have been plagued with pregnancy migraines and I haven’t run more than 5 miles at a time over the past 2 weeks, sometimes walking quite a bit of those runs. I would love some advice…if I was not pregnant and my training was slacking like this I would be a little concerned but just do it anyway. My question is, being pregnant combined with not training properly and with the race just 3 weeks away…is it less than smart to do this race? Should I just let go and look to next year to do this distance again?
