Elizabeth Clor's Blog, page 18

How I trained for the Rehoboth Beach Marathon

This has been an interesting training cycle. Up until about two weeks ago, I honestly wasn't feeling all that confident about my marathon fitness. I had "bonked" my long run and had two disappointing tune-up races, where I missed my goal by over two minutes each time. But then, things started to turn
The Richmond Half, by C. Youngaround. I nailed a workout with 8 tempo miles in it, I ran my first sub-20 5K ever (PRing by 19 seconds), and I felt amazing during a 22 miler that included a hefty...

I PR'ed My First Masters Race

I really don't like to give away the punchline in the blog post title, but yes, I set a PR in my first race in my 40's.

I ran my 13th consecutive Virginia Run Turkey Trot this morning. I know this course like the back of my hand, and I think that knowing it is the key to running a fast race. The course profile is gently rolling hills, but if you know how to tackle it, it can be faster than many flat courses.

Up until today, I wasn't particularly happy with my fall racing season. The ten-miler I...

Weather craziness and a 79-mile week

It snowed and sleeted and ice-pelleted and freezing rained on November 15th. In Northern Virginia. What is going on with the weather this year? Because I run outside every day, I am keenly aware of all the weather records we have broken this year:

Un-forecasted heavy downpour- We had significant snowfall (our largest of the season) on March 21: the first day of spring!
- Summer-like weather started in early May, and we set a new record on May 2nd, hitting 91 degrees
- Nearly the entire month of...

The Richmond Half Marathon - Goodbye 30's!

I'll be honest, I had high hopes going into this race. I truly believed myself to be in the best half-marathon shape I've ever been, and my recent workouts had been faster than those leading up to my PR half marathon in Houston last January. Even though I know anything can happen in a race, I was about 90% confident I'd set a PR. I hadn't set a PR in any distance since Houston in January and I knew I had come a long way with my fitness since then. I had run this race 3 times in the past: 2008...

I'm turning 40. Here are my thoughts.

In one week, I will be 40 years old! It's taken me about a year to accept this, but I have finally not only accepted it, but I am embracing it.

39 and 11 months oldBecause this is my running blog, I don't write much about my life outside of running. But every once in a while, I think it's appropriate, and this is one of those occasions. I want to capture my reflections about this point in my life, and compare them to where I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, in this blog post, I wrote this:

I sta...

Rehoboth Beach Marathon: 6 Weeks To Go!

How did that happen? All of a sudden the marathon is so soon. I realized that I hadn't posted much about my training, so here's and update.

Post-Race Illness
The day after the Lower Potomac 10-Miler, I woke up quite ill. Only a runner would think, "Yes! That explains why I ran the race slower than I expected to!" So in a sense, it was good news because I had been feeling like the race result indicated I wasn't in as good of shape as I had believed. But with my history of prolonged illness, ther...

Lower Potomac 10-Miler

If you've been chomping at the bit for my Army Ten Miler race report, don't worry-- you didn't miss anything! I was a no show and decided instead to wait a week and run the Lower Potomac 10-Miler.

The weather for the Army Ten Miler was nearly as horrible as last year: 73 degrees with 100% humidity. Since I had already run that race in those conditions, and I know that my immune system issues are triggered by running hard in the humidity, I decided it would be best to skip it. There was really...

Boston Qualifying Times Are Now 5 Minutes Faster

On Thursday of this week the Boston Athletic Association (B. A. A.) announced that they have changed the qualifying standards for the 2020 race. Each age/gender group must now run 5 minutes faster to qualify. They made this change due to the increasing demand for the race, with 2019 qualifiers have to run 4 minutes and 52 seconds faster than their qualifying standard to gain entry.

I'm not surprised by this change, and since the "buffer" has been increasing each year for the last three years,...

Run! Geek! Run! 5K Race Report

After having run three races as training runs this summer, I was itching to race something full-out. Since getting sick for six weeks last June (combined with my history of summer illness) my new rule is to not fully exert myself in warm and humid weather. But today it was finally cool enough to race!

This race has been on my schedule since July. I knew I would want a "comeback" 5K once the weather got cooler, basically just to practice racing again, so this was it. This race used to be an 8K...

My Week in Shoes

As I've mentioned previously, I am running the Rehoboth Beach marathon on December 8th. This means that I am not officially marathon training yet, rather I'm preparing to train for this marathon.  This means that I am building the strength and endurance to be able to handle 70+ mile weeks, with 3-4 quality workouts each week. That type of load is not sustainable for more than 6-8 weeks, so I
spend the weeks prior to that preparing my body for what's ahead.

I wore all of these shoes this w...