Bethel Half Marathon Race Report

Wow, its really been a while since I had a chance to sit down and post something!  What better reason to post than to recap an awesome race? Last Saturday I ran in the town of Bethel's Half Marathon. This race it actually the longest running 1/2 in Western North Carolina, celebrating it's 19th year!  Bethel is a really small town outside of Canton, NC which is the town we locals know by the horrible smell the paper plant pumps out into the atmosphere. Ugh! Anyway, Bethel sits at the foot of Cold Mountain, which yes, this is the same mountain made famous in the novel and the movie Cold Mountain.  It was a beautiful run, absolutely breathtaking!  It was by far my favorite running race of the season.  The weather was a bit chilly at the start, as there was frost on the grass, but as always, once you start running your body temperature rises and for a perspirator like me....the sweat starts flowing!  Thank God for headbands!  Anyway, there were a few hills here and there, but the course was suprisingly flat for this area of NC.  At one point I was running by a farm and these two beautiful horses came running out to the fence along the road and then ran beside me as I trotted my way by them.  Seriously, that was a pretty cool thing! Anyway, I ended up finishing in 1 hour 54 mins, which I was happy with being that this is my first 1/2 marathon and my goal was to finish in under 2 hours given the mountainous terrain.  I highly recommend this race and the small town charm was just lovely!  Lots of fresh baked breads, cakes, and cookies at the finish line!  They also had some kick ass homemade potato soup! 

In terms of training, I have laid out a pretty intense "Off Season" plan that includes 4 runs, 3 bikes, 4 swims, 5 weight training, and 7 yoga workouts per week.  I will post a seperate post hopefully tomorrow that lays out exactly what each workout consists of.  I have high expectations of increasing my fitness this fall and winter, so here goes nothing!!!!!  I am two weeks into the plan and have hit my workouts consistently, so its certainly do-able.  Right now I am doing 2-a-days through the week and oneworkout on the weekend days.

Got my indoor bike trainer and love it.  I have seriously been killing it with this thing.  I pop in a scary movie after the family is in bed and off I go.  I get to watch all the horror films I have missed in the last couple of years and I get some serious mileage on the bike at the same time! What's better than that???

So here's hoping anyone reading this happy training, happy life and happy loving!  Keep at it and train til' you can't train no more!