There was so much I wanted this half marathon to be. It was, after all, my 15th half marathon and that’s a pretty big milestone.

After not coming any where near a PR in Miami I had set my sights on Brooklyn. I had such optimistic thoughts but then my body just decided it was not going to happen. I knew this about a month ago but I still had hopes for a miracle on race day.

The weather cooperated but the miracle I was hoping for just was not going to materialize. For the most part, I am ok with that.

The race was fun and I’m glad that Brooklyn was my 15th half marathon considering that it was also my first. That seems just about right in my book.

I also have a good idea of what happened to cause my training to be so off. In one word — exhaustion. I had just a great year last year but I was also dealing with my mother’s illness and going to the hospital or PT rehab facility for nine months with only a few days off for myself. Running is what kept me going since that was the only time I was able to carve out for myself. I was running on pent up energy and anxiety.

Now that my mother’s health is in check and everything has settled down my body started to give me those signals that I needed the rest. But I ignored them and ran three half marathons in three months, normally that would have been ok but I took an aggressive approach to that training with little rest days in between.

Now that I know that I have to make some changes in the training. I don’t start training for the NYC Marathon until July 1. I’ll still be running races but I won’t be racing them. There will be no time goals and I’ll just be running for fun and making sure I take my proper rest days.

But when training does start up again I know I have to make some changes in order to improve. With NY in November I have also decided to run the London Marathon in April 2014 and upgrade my training plan from novice to intermediate. It’s time to run like a big grown up runner.

The new plan has two 20 mile long runs and I’ll be running more weekly miles than ever before. I know I can no longer pretend that XT/Rest means extra rest but cross training. I intend to do that. I’ve also gotten back onto a proper nutrition plan, something I lost track of during the past year.

So Brooklyn may not have been the big goal race but the training process for it has gotten me back in the right frame of mind for my new goals.

Thank you, Brooklyn.