Palm Springs Half-Marathon

Chelsey and I drove out to Palm Springs on Valentine's Day for a little weekend away and so I could run the Palm Springs Half-Marathon on Sunday morning. It rained quite a bit late last week, but we got lucky and it was pretty nice both Saturday and Sunday. It was actually bright and sunny when we got to Palm Springs so we were able to walk through downtown. We grabbed lunch at the art fair that was set up in a park in the area (the art fair is a common occurrence there) and looked at the various paintings and other knick-knacks. Well, some of them were more than knick-knacks: one guy was selling very nice pieces of furniture he had made. We didn't have anywhere to put one, though, so we passed.
Sunday morning we had to get up early for the race. It didn't go too well for me. I can't really explain it, but my legs were just dead tired from the very beginning of the race. The first mile was more or less the pace I wanted to run, but it felt much harder than it should have. After a couple of miles I tried to slow down and settle into a rhythm, hoping I could get comfortable and build on it, but it was a struggle the whole way. My pace was all over the map - a few really slow miles, a couple miles much quicker, then slowing way back down. It was just not my day, I guess.
I found out last week at the Alumni Meet that the Boston Marathon has closed registration for this year. With that out of the way and my performance Saturday, I think I'm going to take a couple of weeks easy and then build up again. I want to give the half-marathon another go in a couple of months, depending on what happens in the rest of my life.
-Jason