This last week has been nuts for me. I left on Thursday and went to the east coast for 3 days, flew to Vegas and did a conference for 4 days. Straight from a schedule where I felt "off" the entire time due to the time zone difference into one where I was on my feet almost all day answering questions and eating and sleeping when I got a chance. I got home late Thursday night, was totally useless at work on Friday, yesterday helped sod my backyard (thankfully my dad understood and assigned me mostly the watering job, though it was super sunny), and today ran my half marathon. I did get my last week of running in, except my last long run which was supposed to be Sunday (seems weird to do 12 miles 7 days before the half marathon, but I guess the last distance I trained for was the marathon so it's all different).

I'm not sure how I expected to recover from 7 days of travel in 2 days, I guess I was being optimistic. I ordered a size S shirt only to find I needed an XS but they wouldn't trade until today (at which point they were all out ). I got up this morning and felt tired, but I figured it was just from getting up early. An hour later, in the car, I was still yawning (bad sign). I somehow got it in my head that the run started at 8:00, but it actually started at 7:30 (hooray for chip timing, it didn't really matter, I just started 15 minutes after everyone else). I felt tired until mile 7, and my heart rate showed it, too. I lost my hammer gel flask around mile 6, but didn't realise it until mile 10 when I wanted some more.

On the upside: my late start didn't really matter, I caught up to a lot of HM runners, the last 6 miles felt really good, and I tried to carry another tired runner through the finish (she almost made it with me, just 10 steps to go, when she couldn't push any harder). I also learned a valuable lesson about my capacity for recovery from tiredness.

I finished in something like 2:20... 10:41 miles. Slower than I expected, I think I really would have rocked it if I wasn't still beat from the schedule. And hey, not everyone can say they ran a half marathon on their birthday.