Athlete Jill Glasgow shares her changing perspective on racing and training
I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love sports. I love everything about them, the competitiveness, the pursuit, the challenge, the joy, the failures, the amateurs and the professionals alike. And it really doesn’t matter what the sport is. If it’s on TV, I’ll watch it. If I have a chance to try it, I’ll play. But if I’m truly being honest, my joy in sport has always hinged on competitiveness, the performance, and the chance to improve. The dry spells in “gains” were acceptable because the goals met were shortly to follow. And then I turned 40 years old. The dry spells between achieving goals got further apart and the performance graph looks more like the footprints of the Cha-cha than an upward trending curve. Fast forward through many years of internal discussions and struggles in my own head and I came to the conclusion that I needed some time to do the things that reminded me of the joy sports had always brought me but was so hard to find recently. What brings me joy?
I spent the later half of 2024, through the winter and into the spring of 2025 running on as many trails as I could find. I had no time goals, no real performance measures and ran almost solely on RPE and effort. I ran to feel good about the effort I put in and be outside in God’s creation. And it worked! The joy came back. After every run I’d look at trail races and neighboring trails to try out. I texted countless UltraSignup pages to my coach for 50k’s, 50mile races, 100k’s and 100 mile races that looked intriguing and excited me.
So naturally while out to dinner with a long time friend, I signed up for a road half marathon. HA! I know, right?! Running through the streets of down-town Allentown, PA is the furthest thing from all the trail running but it was an opportunity to support my friend in her new found love of running. I was happy to sign up for it, expectation free.
My friend, Robyn, runs quite a bit faster than me and it was cold out the morning of the race. So I started out at a spicy pace to hang with her and warm up a bit. After a mile, I high-fived her and said, “Go get that PR you’ve been chasing!” and off she went. I settled into my much slower, expectation free pace and got ready for a run that the race organizer described as flat. Spoiler alert, if you sign up for this race, it’s not flat.
I had a couple different plans but the main plan was to run steady and ease in for the first 3 miles, descending (in effort) the next 7 and at mile 10, leave what energy and spice I had on the course and finish feeling really strong for the last 3. And then the 2:30 pace group caught me. An old goal that I had for many years but never achieved popped into my head; finishing a stand alone road half marathon in under 2:30. If I stayed with them it would mean that descending those 7 miles was out of the question and instead, I’d have to jump straight to the fastest pace and hang there right from the start.
In my earlier years of sport and racing, I would have quickly scanned my brain for proof that I could run at that pace for 13.1 miles. I would have looked for data, training evidence, literal proof that the risk really wasn’t a risk at all. When I found that proof, I’d run at that pace. This time was different. I didn’t have that proof or evidence to lean on but I was curious. What if I ran at this pace? What if I tried to hang with them? What have I got to lose?
Curiosity won that mental battle and I quickened my pace to keep up with the 2:30 group. For the first mile I thought, “oh God, I can’t hold this for 10 more miles” and the thought to slow down came across my mind. Eventually things settled down in my brain, I found some metal toughness and I realized that I was a little uncomfortable but not going to blow up, not yet anyway. So I stayed the course.
Over the next 8 miles, I ticked off each mile by saying, “what if I run one more?” The course had plenty of well stocked aid stations no more than 2 miles apart and in between those, there were live bands playing all kinds of music. With each aid station we all remarked at how glad we were that they were still well stocked because when you’re the Captain of the Back of the Pack, vacant aid stations and running out of supplies is a real thing. The race organizers did a great job in not only having enough for everyone but also making it a really fun experience with the live music. No one packed up before the last racer had passed them.
The middle miles were along a river path and that’s where the hills came into play. At each aid station the group slowed to get water but then burned another match getting right back on pace afterward. Our pacer did an amazing job of keeping us on track with the aid stations stops and hills but with each passing hill, I lost the pacer a bit more.
At mile 11 I slowed down and started to run my own race. The pacer pulled away and all I felt was how proud I was that I took a chance and that I hung in there for 8 miles. It was 8 miles of heavy breathing, hard running, mental battles and no guarantee that I could keep that up but I did it anyway. I pushed through fueled by gels and curiosity and wasn’t ready to stop there. I found a slightly slower pace and refocused on my initial plan, leaving what energy and spice I had left, all out on the course for the last couple miles.
400m from the finish I caught up with 2 women from the 2:30 pace group that fell behind like me. We looked at the 15% embankment that we had to climb and thought, “Flat, yeah right!” We climbed the hill and ran our victory lap through the stadium track to finish strong. It was by far one of the best road races I’d ever run. Not because I reached my goal of sub 2:30 because I didn’t. I missed that by 1 minute and 58 seconds. It wasn’t because I had a well written performance race plan and stuck to those metrics. That went out the window when I decided to take a risk and bet on myself. I had believed in myself and whether my goal was achieved or not, that’s a feeling I’d never exchange.
I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch. It wasn’t until 20 minutes later when I looked at it, that it said I’d run my fastest ever 13.1miles. An unexpected, unplanned but certainly hard fought PR. PR’s just hit different when you are in your late 40’s. The gains are harder to come by and harder to figure out. You have to find joy in the pursuit and not the proof. You have to believe in yourself more than ever before, take the risk and have your own back even if it doesn’t work out. When all that comes together, that’s the true win. That’s the moment! Who knows, you might just grab yourself a shiny new PR along the way.
