Yesterday morning I ran my first big race since the marathon . It's a special race for me, because this particular race was my first half marathon, in 2009. Originally called the " Women's Running Magazine Women's Half Marathon" (yes, a redundant mouthful), and then the "Lady Speed Stick Women's Half Marathon" (can you guess the sponsor they gained?), and now simply the " Women's Running Series Half Marathon," the race has changed quite a bit over the years. It began as a local race, which initiated from what was then a local publication, Women's Running Magazine   (now owned by Competitor Group --the same company that owns the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series, Muddy Buddy Series, and Competitor Magazine , to name a few). Perhaps you can already see where I'm going with this. The race series has branched out to Nashville, San Diego, and Scottsdale, in addition to St. Pete. It's becoming another big-name race series, d...

This past Sunday, I ran for the third consecutive year in the Women's Running Magazine Women's Half Marathon in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Women's Half is the first half-marathon I ever ran, so it is a somewhat sentimental race for me. In the past two years, I'd trained exclusively for this race in the months leading up to it. This year, however, I had trained mainly for the Chicago Marathon, which occurred about six weeks prior to this race. So those six weeks were not terribly focused or dedicated training weeks; they were more like let's-see-what-I-can-pull-out-of-this-body-before-the-race weeks. I did manage to pull out some long runs, and I even improved my pace since the marathon. But having only given my body one week of rest directly after the marathon, I still had some lingering wear and tear that hadn't yet healed. I conversed with a runner-friend about this, and that conversation led me to think that pain is just a fact of running. Something is alw...