Long Beach 1/2 Marathon

At the urging of my wife, I ran my first 1/2 marathon earlier this month, the Long Beach 1/2 Marathon. I didn't train as well as I should have, but all things considered, it wasn't such a bad experience. It was fun running through downtown and seeing the crowds. For the first time, I was the one being cheered on.

My wife is an avid runner so a 1/2 is not much of a challenge for her; it was for me! I was able to keep a good steady pace until mile 10. At that point, things just sort of froze and I had to do a little walking here and there for the next few miles. My time wasn't bad for my first real run.  As I said, I didn't train properly, as the longest training run I put in was a 10K, which is a little over 6 miles.

My wife is already eyeing the LA Marathon in February. Can I do it? I'm not sure I want to. Running 1/2 a marathon was fun, but after I was done, I could not imagine doing it all over again in order to complete a full marathon. With training, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately, I'm down with a sever cold now so I haven't run in a over a week. I hope I don't loose much conditioning as that was hard work!

Instead of running a marathon, I'm thinking of doing a century. I'll see what comes up in '09!