Day 202.

Rest day, thank goodness!  I am sore and tired today.  After being sick all week, I was amazed at how good my sinuses felt during my race yesterday, but as soon as I got back home, it's like it kicked into overdrive!  I felt worse than I had all week, and this morning I could barely breathe and my head is pounding.  I have to say, though, that I am so glad I decided to do the 1/2 as a training race before doing the full marathon in November.  Now I know more what to expect, and the different, weird things that my body will do on race day.  This morning the official time from the race yesterday were posted on the marathon website.  I actually had a time of 2:37, which is about 1 minute slower than my training run of the same distance.  Considering how I felt during the run, I can't say I'm disappointed.  I trained at a certain speed, and as such the results are fairly predictable.  For those who care about times/places, etc., that time placed me as 302nd out of 416 overall in the 1/2 marathon event.  Not great, but not the worst.  My husband commented that as he watched a lot of the other participants cross the finish line and enter the "recovery" area, and then after watching me when I finished, he noticed that a lot of the others seemed like they were dying, like they had pushed themselves to the max, whereas I recovered fairly quickly.  I guess that can be interpreted for good and for bad.  While I felt like I was pushing pretty hard at the end, the fact that my recovery time was short and pretty easy means that I probably could have given a little more.  I just need to decide if I'm content to feel "comfortable" in my pace and exertion level, or if I want to crank it up a notch.  To be honest with you, right now I'm feeling too tired and weak to make that decision.  Once I'm over this head-cold, or whatever it is, I have a feeling I will be more motivated to do more with my training.  At this point, with this being my first marathon, the most important part of my training is the long run.  The long runs are what teach my body to most efficiently utilize oxygen, glycogen, and all that stuff.  There is an article in this month's Runner's World Magazine that has a marathon training plan that makes the most of the easy/short runs to increase speed, while not overdoing prior to the big day.  I may have to take a second look at that article...