I ran the Drop 13 1/2 marathon a few weeks ago. LOVED it. The whole race is down Big Cottonwood Canyon and is beautiful. I had been training hard and was ready to run my best race. I even lost 13 lbs, so I could get an extra medal. And then the week of the race, my knee and leg started to hurt...an injury was coming on. So I took the week mostly off, and figured I'd power through, take some ibuprofen, and hope for the best.
I wanted to be conservative, so I started off relatively slowly (6:45 min/mile), and sped up after the halfway point to closer to 6 min/miles.
Miles 6-11 were between 6:15 and 5:56, and I felt awesome. My fastest mile of all time (in high school track) is 5:52, so to come that close in a 1/2 marathon felt fantastic. I also shattered my previous 2-mile (12:45) and 5k (20:00) and 10k (40:14) records; replacing them with 11:57, 18:54, and 37:40, respectively. I didn't know I could go that fast! Sure, it was downhill, but still, I was thrilled with the results. The last couple of miles slowed down a bit because it flattened out a bit, a set of stairs, a near miss when a car ran the red light, and a poorly marked end of the course. I finished in 1:23:44, my fastest time ever (by 5 minutes!). And my first negative split! Definitely trying that strategy again. It was the best I've felt during and after a race. I just needed to prove to myself that I could get fast again after twins, and I'm proud to say that I did it!
My time was good enough for a 2nd place overall trophy. I put the trophy on the mantle, so William decided to put his tball trophy up there, too. :) 
Assuming I heal from this injury soon (2 weeks without running and still no end in sight), I have some lofty goals this season. I've been pool running and biking to maintain fitness, so between that and losing my love handles this summer (hoping for another 5-10 lbs of fat loss to get back to pre-pregnancy racing weight and speed me up a tad), I should hopefully manage ok.
My next goal is to best my all-time marathon time of 3:22 (shooting for a 3:10-3:15, I had a 3:32 last year with only half-hearted training), and hopefully break 1:20 in the 1/2. I had a decent amount of spunk left at the end, so I probably should have pushed harder. And I race a lot smarter now that I'm older...we'll see what happens come fall.
