Race Coverage

Heather Went to Tennessee...

Monday, 15 June 2015 00:10

By Heather Lendway (heatherlendway.com)

Challenge Knoxville Race Report - At the beginning of this season I wasn’t planning on racing any half iron distance races but after the Lifetime series was cancelled I had to re-evaluate what I was doing.  With no Olympic distance races on the schedule after July, I could either do more draft legal racing or try some 70.3’s.  I didn’t want to plan on racing a bunch of 70.3’s without knowing if I would enjoy it so I set my sites on racing Challenge Knoxville in May.  Since I’ve been dealing with some body annoyances here and there I wanted to see how my body felt after St. Anthony before I bought my ticket to Knoxville.  After a few days of recovery I knew I would be in fine shape to race so I pulled the trigger and bought my flight and hotel for Knoxville....

Before Knoxville I had only run a half marathon 3 times: Securian Half 2007 (1:47:54), Securian Half 2013 (1:41:14) and a 100 minute training run on a treadmill this winter, I hit 13.1 at 1:37:18, which was my “half PR.”  To give you some more perspective, up until this winter my longest training run was 7 miles.  Even though I hadn’t really been training for the half distance, Coach Phil assured me my fitness would be good enough to get me through it.

Going into the race I wasn’t too nervous, I knew I could finish the race, I just didn’t how how fast.  The last and only time I did a long course race (Leadman Bend 125 in 2013) was the first time I had some major IT Band/knee issues pop up so I was just hoping to get through the race without that happening. READ MORE