I am still amazing and surprised at how my body works…

I did a half marathon yesterday, and even though I wasn’t trained to race it but I figured it’d be a great training run NYCM, I was really not prepared: I stopped running for 6 weeks in the last two months, I hadn’t done any speedwork since early July (all because of a debilitating ulcer), though I felt like I was starting to bounce back. The last two months were a little chaotic to say the least. I could barely walk around the block at times, I had a lot of stress (getting engaged and married in a month!), little sleep, lost some weight, all of it…

With the slow runs I had in the first weeks, I thought my half yesterday would be around 1:50, or 1:55. Really. I ended up with 1:44. How? I had no idea. But my legs and my legs knew exactly what to do. My brain was barely catching up.

It’s amazing how your body evolves and how it really knows what to do. My first half and my first marathon were (2:06 and 3:51 respectively) painful and with a slow recovery. I feel like a fish right back in the water yesterday.

I remember how long it took me to get my time under 1:45: FOUR YEARS. From the 2:06 in 2006, to 1:44 in 2012. I hovered between 1:50 and 1:46 for 4 years… And now I can run a 1:44 very easily. Yes, my PR is far (from this past March of 1:37) so I still have a long way to go to get back to my speed. But I really think it’s remarkable that I can run a 1:44 (in Central Park no less) on any sort of day. I love these looking at these adaptations over time, the only way we can appreciate them.