If you follow me on Instagram, you already saw that I had a great race at the Rock N Roll Half Marathon on Saturday. A few days later, I'm happy to say my recovery is going just as well as the race did, and I'm still just as proud of my race today as I was on Saturday. 

When my friend Emily texted me over the summer and asked if I wanted to run this race with her, I was honestly a bit on the fence. I was still having a bunch of my hamstring issues, and I wasn't sure it was the best idea to commit to the race.

But registration was a super cheap price, and I was excited to run a race in-person again and I figured it was still far enough away that I'd have plenty of time to fix my hamstring and still train. 

Twelve weeks out from the race, my hamstring was feeling good, and I was really excited to try a new training plan that focused on training by heart rate. 

I 100% credit this plan for my strong performance on race morning. I finally did my easy runs easy and let myself properly recover and avoid overtraining. 

Going into race morning though, I was still really nervous because I had been dealing with a super tight hip flexor. My PT told me it was purely muscular and running wouldn't damage it further, but by the end of my training cycle it was not feeling the best. 

My plan was mainly just to see how things went during the race. I've run this race before and I'm really familiar with the course since I live in DC and run certain parts regularly. 

I hoped to ease into things the first few miles and see how I felt. My goal was to get through the first six miles at a comfortable pace, and then reassess from there how I was doing. 

I picked mile 6 because that is where the steepest and most miserable hill on the whole course is. I figured if I was feeling good through the early parts, and the hill wiped me out, I'd find a new strategy for the rest of the course. 

The first several miles flew by. I was so excited to be running a race again. I was soaking in every sign and every spectator and just really happy to be out running on such a gorgeous morning.

I saw Emily on the course somewhere between mile 3 and 4, which was fun. 

The spectators definitely thinned out between miles 4 and 6, and I was really glad I had my music at this point. We were running along Rock Creek Parkway, and the road just started to feel really long. I think I was also anticipating the stupid big hill because it's what you take from Rock Creek Parkway to the rest of the course. 

But despite the anticipation, I was still feeling good. Even when I got to the hill, mentally I'd been preparing myself to need to walk part of it. But I just slowed down a bit and kept running. It was a slow and brutal climb, but I eventually got to the top took the turn and looked forward to the course flattening for a bit. 

And when I say a bit, it was a pretty short bit. For the next several miles the course rolled. Lots of up and down through neighborhoods where there were a good amount of spectators. Miles 6-8ish are definitely some of the most fun on the course. 

I passed my best friend Emily around mile 7. She had come out to cheer for me and made me a sign! It was so great to see her and she definitely gave me a little extra burst of energy. 

When I hit mile 9, I could feel my energy fading a bit. I'd been doing a pretty good job with fuel throughout the race, but I could tell the miles were catching up to me. I knew I had a decent downhill stretch of course ahead of me, so I backed off a tiny bit and sort of let gravity do some of the work for me here. 

I kept this cruising pace through mile 10 and when I turned onto K St. I had to really start the motivational self talk. 

I took my final Gu a bit earlier than planned, hoping the extra calories would hit my bloodstream quickly. And then I basically just tried to hang on. 

H St. had some great crowd support, so I kept putting one foot in front of the other, trying to mentally count down the time until the next mile marker. Despite how tired I was, I passed the mile 11 marker a bit sooner than I expected to. The climb up to mile 12 though really killed me. It wasn't a steep climb, it was just a gentle long hill, but I was struggling. 

At some point, we made the final turn of the race with right around a mile to go, and it was a long and blissful downhill. Usually that's not the way I feel about downhills at the end of the race, but it was just what I needed on Saturday. I just let myself cruise, and it turned out the last mile was my fastest mile of the whole race. 

I passed my husband right at mile 13 and with my last bit of energy gave a final kick toward the finish line. 

My final time was 2:08:36. Definitely not a PR, but a time I am so happy with because of the strong race I ran.

October started off as a slow reading month, but I picked up some really great books in the middle and definitely ended on a high note. Lots of thrillers and mysteries, which seemed appropriate for October. 

Five Stars

The Push by Ashley Audrain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book definitely lived up to the hype. It was a page-turning thriller where the whole time you have to figure out what is going on with the relationship between a mother and her first-born child. Is the child really as nefarious as the mother perceives her to be? Or is it all in the mom's head like her husband seems to think? This is the central question of the book as mysterious things keep happening and as the reader, you don't know if the narrator is reliable. Super fast and good read.

Four Stars

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't love scary books, but I love Tiffany D. Jackson, so I picked this one up anyway. And yea, it was scary. I couldn't read it night in bed in the dark because every time I heard a noise, I jumped a bit. The book follows a family that moves to the middle of nowhere when the mom is awarded an art fellowship. But there are some weird things going on in the neighborhood and depending who you talk to you get a different story about why things are so desolate in town. This book is good. It's worth reading even if scary things aren't your thing.

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that you finish and ask yourself how in the world can this be a true story. Elizabeth Packard was sent to an insane asylum by her husband in the 1860s. He had no real proof that she had any sort of mental illness, but at the time all a husband needed to do was claim a wife was "insane" and she could be sent away. But Elizabeth didn't go quietly. She stirred up trouble in the asylum, continuously pleading her case for her release, and when it was finally granted after three years, she worked tirelessly to advocate for the women still locked up. It's a result of her lobbying that led to several laws that protected women from this kind of treatment by the men in their lives. The story was really good though I felt at times there were parts that were a bit slow. But still a great read to understand just how nonexistent women's rights used to be.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love a good celebrity memoir audiobook and McConaughey's didn't disappoint. Before listening to this book, I didn't know much about his life before acting, so I enjoyed listening to him talk about his rough upbringing, how he eventually made his way into show biz, and the ups and downs of his career.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun suspenseful mystery. Nora receives an invite to Clare's bachelorette party -- even though Nora hasn't seen or spoken to Claire in 10 years. But out of morbid curiosity, Nora and another friend decide to go. It's a strange cast of characters that arrive at the house deep in the woods, and when someone winds up dead, basically anyone could be guilty. I had a strong suspicion about who had committed the crime, and I couldn't wait to finish the book to see if I was right.

Two Stars

Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The description of this book is super deceptive. I went in thinking I was going to be reading a fast-paced thriller about a husband who goes missing. But instead, I suffered through a slog of a story that didn't get much into trying to find the husband, but focused on the family dynamic without him. It was slow, the characters were largely meh and it was way too long. Only finished it because it was a book club book. Wouldn't recommend.

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On Sunday morning, my mom and I ran the 2021 Bay Bridge Run 10K. It was our first in-person race since the pandemic started, and I was so excited to be racing again.

I had done this same run back in 2015, when it was called the Across the Bay 10K and was managed by a different race company. I had a great time in that race and was excited to run across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge again. 

The morning started early with a drive out to Navy's football stadium where we would board shuttles to the start line at the base of the east-bound span of the bridge. This is where things started to go wrong when it came to race logistics.

We got into the parking lot around 7 a.m. about 30 minutes before our instructions said we needed to be on a shuttle. We used the porta-potties, and then got in the back of the massive line of people also waiting to board shuttles. 

We waited in line for a while to go through security that ensured we had a race bib and a mask. We were finally settled on our bus at 7:36 a.m. and started the drive to the start line. 

Our wave wasn't scheduled to start until 8:30, so I wasn't too worried that we were running a bit behind schedule. Our shuttle dropped us off at the starting area around 8, which still left of us plenty of time for one more bathroom run and to make our way to the start line. 

And this is where things got really bad. There was an incredibly long line of people waiting to get into the corrals. So we got into the back of it, figuring it was all the people in the 8:15 wave waiting to start. Because the bridge is only so wide, this race is really strict about leaving 15 minutes in between waves. 

Eventually race organizers sent tons more people over and the whole concept of waiting in a line was thrown out and it was sort of a mad surge to get into the starting area. We heard the 8:15 wave go off, and we were still no where near the start line. 

We waited some more and then eventually another wave went off at 8:30. That was supposed to be our wave, and we were supposedly the "last" wave according to the website. But there were still tons of people waiting to start. 

We eventually made our way to the start line and were able to start with a group at 8:45. My friend's mom who was supposed to start at 7:45 wasn't able to start until 8:15. So I don't know what went on at the race start but it was so horribly unorganized. I was annoyed we had to wait an extra 15 minutes, but I would have been especially pissed if I got there super early and then had to wait an extra half hour just to start. 

Once we were actually able to start, the race was about as great as I remembered it. It was so fun to be running across the bridge. The views were spectacular, though I didn't stop to take any pictures because I was feeling pretty good about my pace. 

The only thing that wasn't great was that the waves weren't organized by pace, so I kept running into packs of walkers four or five across, which made it kind of hard to maneuver. 

Other than having to bob and weave a bunch, I felt really good about this run. I started out pushing the pace a little bit, and was happy that I was able to run pretty consistently for the first two miles, which are a slow and steady uphill climb. I was actually really impressed by how easy the big hill felt. Must be because of all the training I've been doing on the hills in my neighborhood. 

Once I crested the top of the bridge, I just let gravity carry me the down the other side. I was moving pretty fast, checking my watch sometimes seeing 8-minute mile paces. I didn't feel like I was working too hard though, so I just went with it, banking lots of time in those two miles.

When you finally get off the bridge, there's still about 1.5 miles of running left. The course pretty quickly veers off Rte. 50 dumping you into a back road or parking lot. The finish line was in a different place compared to the last time I ran, and this time we had a bit more climbing to do to get up to an overpass that would take us across the highway. 

The course got super narrow here because the overpass was still open to traffic, and several runners had a hard time getting past the walkers walking four across. Runners were shouting on your left and excuse me, trying to get by. I hopped into the grass a few times to trying to get around people. 

We eventually made it to the final turn on the course, and I was able to pick up a little more speed to get myself across the finish line. 

My official time was 57:39, only about a minute and a half off my 10K PR. 

I was super happy with how I ran this race. I felt strong the whole time and had a little left in the tank for a small surge at the end. This race gave me a lot of confidence that my half marathon in two weeks will go well too and that all these weeks of training based on heart rate are really paying off.