I had a busy fall, running two half marathons and one 4.75 mile race on Thanksgiving day. The two half marathons were numbers 2 and 3 for me, and included 100% solo training. Running through the back roads of Connecticut was very interesting – and a great way to put running into perspective. The fact that the training was all done by myself, with no one asking if I would be there, or if I could go faster or slower, \u00a0or if I minded if they walked some. Those decisions were all mine. I was proud of the effort I put forth this year, and surprised myself at how many times I got up early and headed out for what I knew was going to be a very difficult effort. All in all, I enjoyed the overall experience, but am not sure I am ready to do that all over again anytime soon.<\/p>\n
The last race was done with the entire family – a great way to start the day on Thanksgiving. Kaite started running with me, and stuck with me for over a mile. She put forth a great amount of effort – and knew when to pull up and wait for her mom and brother. At that point, I was able to put my head down and power through the rest of the first hill. After that hill, there was a very long downhill run – and I so enjoyed that! I just let my body flow down the hill, and ended the race with a 10:15 pace which is the best I’ve done on any run that long. Next year, I am shooting for a 9:30 pace for the race, but the crowd and my prep will be the things to determine if that is realistic. I loved the fact that the entire family participated – and that was the very best part about the race when all is said and done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a busy fall, running two half marathons and one 4.75 mile race on Thanksgiving day. The two half marathons were numbers 2 and 3 for me, and included 100% solo training. Running through the back roads of Connecticut was very interesting – and a great way to put running into perspective. The fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,39,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-manchester","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39P1R-1e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}