The verdict

It's a day and a half after Sunday's race and so far, so good. No hamstring pain! I am sore in a few places - mostly my calves and feet. My feet are out of shape! Not only did I lose a lot of my callouses (sorry, gross) and haven't built them back up yet, but the roughness of the New Orleans roads just tear my feet up. This course especially hits a lot of pot-holed, cracked, rough areas.

I took a 3 mile walk yesterday afternoon, and that was the real test of hamstring pain: whenever I've run "far", then walked later, that seems to precipitate pain. Still no pain. I'm hopeful, but still hesitant to claim full victory because I didn't run this morning. I had a PT appointment at 7:30 am which filled my day up to the point that I opted instead for core work and strength tonight after dinner. Tomorrow I'll do an easy run, although an early morning work conference (at which I am required to wear a repulsive light blue polyester polo shirt, why on earth I do not know) may push that to the afternoon.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few more pictures David took at the finish (he is slowly adding them to Facebook and I'm slowly stealing them for my posts):

Geb Gebremariam greeting fans after a 2nd place in the half

Women's half winner Meseret Defar: watch her cute interview here

Half marathon champion Mo Farah giving high-fives. My husband got one. I want one. :(

I wanted to clear something up from Sunday's post. In all your charming comments I noticed several that mentioned that I ran a fast half for not really training. I just want to go on the record saying two things:
1. I don't recommend it. Really.
2. Running a half-marathon straight off injury with minimal/no training does not make me or anyone else bad*ss. It makes me silly. The best way to run a race is, duh, to train for it.

I've noticed that some runners do the whole, "Yeah, I PRd and I didn't even train for this race", or "It's not my fastest, but I only ran 17 miles this month" or "Yeah, I decided yesterday to run the full marathon*, whatevs, haven't trained at all" or "I only ran one long run and just ran a 2:43 marathon" thing. I think people use the not-trained excuse to make their times seem faster - and I don't want to be one of those people. It's like a warped way of bragging. And even more important, it is foolish to suggest we should all just go run races unprepared. Way to waste a race fee!

So, in the interests of transparency and honesty, let's see what kind of preparation went into this race:

Miles: In December I ran 30 miles. In January I ran 77, and this month I crept up to almost 100 before the race. November, pre-injury, I ran 181 and in October I ran 241. So not close to my old levels, but not non-existant, either.
Pain-free miles: I had two pain-free runs pre-race: a 3 miler and a 5 miler. But when you're healing up, you can tell. It gives confidence.
Distance: Since my injury I ran four 10-milers and one very slow 12 miler. All the rest were 3 to 5 with a rare 6 miler. One of those 10 milers was right after injury and was dumb and excruciating; I was trying to keep my hubby company but it was a mistake. The rest were more recent, when I was clearly on the mend.
Speed: Exactly one mile. A few weeks ago I ran a 10 mile progression run and near the end of it I ran into my running buddy Jared. He's fast. I ran with him and got in one 6:40 mile, the fastest I've gone in forever, and it thrilled me to death. But the pace for the whole run was 7:04 average, and that's what I based Sunday's pace on: I wanted to run 7:04 or 7:05 pace or faster if I felt better.

Hopefully this shows that while I did not specifically train to run a half marathon, I did keep up enough mileage and practice for it not to be a stupid decision to run the race. I think after almost a whole year of injuries I'm finished with bad decision-making when it comes to running. From Sunday on out I'm going to be a smart runner and die at 101 years old with my running shoes on!

*My little brother actually did this, but he also ran a 2:49 debut marathon when he was 19. So.