Deciding on my next race

I had mentioned previously that I was struggling on trying to figure out what to do for my Fall half marathon.  I was trying to decide between the Richmond Half (it was my first half marathon back in 2014) and the Philadelphia Half (which would be a new race to me).

 

All smiles finishing my first half!

Both are races with great reputations and both are a similar distance from me, in easy driving distance.  Both have great crowd support and good swag.  I tried to research and both seem to have a similar amount of uphill.

Pros for Richmond - returning to a great race 5 years later, a little earlier in November so not as close to the holidays and maybe not as cold, a little cheaper, a bit of extra swag with the finisher's blanket.

 

Swag from the 2014 race

Pros for Philadelphia - a new race and a new city to explore, more scenic route, could visit my nephew at college.

As you can see, they're pretty similarly matched.  But after a lot of back and forth, I finally ended up deciding on Richmond!  It was pretty much the earlier weekend in November that did it for me.  The Philadelphia race is the weekend before Thanksgiving, which means I would have to travel the Wednesday or Thursday after the race.  It seemed like it would make my life easier to have a bit more distance in between the race and Thanksgiving.

I'm excited to have made the decision on my Fall race!  Next step is to start training.  The longest I've run since January's marathon is 8 miles.  And I want to continue working on improving my speed.  So this may be a bit of an ambitious training plan.