Apr 18, 2011 — bryan913
Several months ago I registered for this half marathon when they offered the first 100 entrants would pay $17.66. How could you say no to that?! So I signed up with initial plans of using this as a training day before I pumped up my cycling miles to get ready for Eagleman. However, plans change and I will not be racing Eagleman this year (that'll be for another blog) and this race became a little higher priority. My PR at this distance was set in 2009 with 1:20:28 on a very flat course. Even though the course for yesterday's race was slightly more challenging, I still had all intentions of breaking 1:20 and the plan was to head out at 6:05 pace.
I had a weird pre-race week that left me feeling VERY fatigued after my last tempo run (in the pouring rain) from Tuesday. I felt pretty lethargic Tuesday through Friday last week, but started to feel better after dinner of Friday. I swam and had an easy 20 minute run Saturday and was feeling much better, so reaching my goal was looking very possible. The forecast for the race was to be mid 50's to 60 with strong winds, so nothing wrong with that.
Saturday night, it poured. It started to rain at around 1:00pm and didn't let up until well after midnight. I woke up to nice weather on Sunday, but more on that later. Sunday morning (race morning) was pretty normal. I like to shower to wake up a little, so did that and then got my stuff together. At 5:15am I went out to get a bagel and everything was closed! So I went home and finished getting my gear together and waited around til 6:00am to leave. I went back to the bagel shop, they were open, but no bagels. I had to settle for Dunkin Donut's poor excuse for a bagel and was on teh road 15 minutes later than I was hoping for. No problem, though, no traffic on a Sunday morning. I got to the race site a little after 7:00am and met up with two friends who were running. We stayed warm in the car for a little and went out for our warm up at about 7:45. After finishing the warm-up and pre-care bathroom break we went back outside to run some striders and loosen up. This is where things got interesting.
The race director then made an announcement that the course had to be changed because of flooding of a nearby river that flooded a large part of the course. The 13.1 mile run was now going to be a 10-mile race!!! I was MAD! But, what can you do? So now I had to get into a little different mindset and think about running sub 6:00's instead of the planned 6:05's. The new goal was to break 60.
The gun went off on time and the race got started no problem. I went through the first mile at 5:36, a little too fast! Mile two and three were more controlled at 5:53 and 5:45. Then we hit some huge head winds and I slipped off with a 6:10 and a 6:02. I was sitting in about 14th overall at this point. Not terrible numbers but I wasn't feeling it. I wanted to go out strong, but this might have been too strong. Miles 6 and 7 were uneventful but painful and I stayed on track with a 5:59 and a 5:53, but better news was that I was starting to reel in some runners ahead of me. I Decided I had to suck it up and go for it. Mile 8 was a 5:39 and mile 9 was a 5:26. I moved into 9th place and was gaining on 8th. I checked my watch and thought I could catch 8th place in this last mile. However, the course turned left and there was the finish line! I looked down again and my watch read 9.4 miles! Oh well, not catching that guy! Mile 10 was only 0.65 miles and I came across the 9.65 mile race in 55:25 for 9th place.
So it wasn't a perfect day, but I am very happy with my fitness. My average pace for the run was 5:44/mile (which was my 5K pace in a race last December) and I definitely wasn't exhausted afterwards. If this was a half marathon, I pretty certain I would easily break 1:20:00. Since things didn't go according to plan, I am going to sign up for another half marathon on May 1st to try to PR. It is the same race I PR'd at two years ago. However, given yesterday's run on a rolling WINDY course, my new goal time is 1:18:00.
So I will put in another hard week this week with a tempo run on Tuesday and my last big track workout Thursday and a 10 mile distance run over the weekend before resting up for the race.
I had a weird pre-race week that left me feeling VERY fatigued after my last tempo run (in the pouring rain) from Tuesday. I felt pretty lethargic Tuesday through Friday last week, but started to feel better after dinner of Friday. I swam and had an easy 20 minute run Saturday and was feeling much better, so reaching my goal was looking very possible. The forecast for the race was to be mid 50's to 60 with strong winds, so nothing wrong with that.
Saturday night, it poured. It started to rain at around 1:00pm and didn't let up until well after midnight. I woke up to nice weather on Sunday, but more on that later. Sunday morning (race morning) was pretty normal. I like to shower to wake up a little, so did that and then got my stuff together. At 5:15am I went out to get a bagel and everything was closed! So I went home and finished getting my gear together and waited around til 6:00am to leave. I went back to the bagel shop, they were open, but no bagels. I had to settle for Dunkin Donut's poor excuse for a bagel and was on teh road 15 minutes later than I was hoping for. No problem, though, no traffic on a Sunday morning. I got to the race site a little after 7:00am and met up with two friends who were running. We stayed warm in the car for a little and went out for our warm up at about 7:45. After finishing the warm-up and pre-care bathroom break we went back outside to run some striders and loosen up. This is where things got interesting.
The race director then made an announcement that the course had to be changed because of flooding of a nearby river that flooded a large part of the course. The 13.1 mile run was now going to be a 10-mile race!!! I was MAD! But, what can you do? So now I had to get into a little different mindset and think about running sub 6:00's instead of the planned 6:05's. The new goal was to break 60.
The gun went off on time and the race got started no problem. I went through the first mile at 5:36, a little too fast! Mile two and three were more controlled at 5:53 and 5:45. Then we hit some huge head winds and I slipped off with a 6:10 and a 6:02. I was sitting in about 14th overall at this point. Not terrible numbers but I wasn't feeling it. I wanted to go out strong, but this might have been too strong. Miles 6 and 7 were uneventful but painful and I stayed on track with a 5:59 and a 5:53, but better news was that I was starting to reel in some runners ahead of me. I Decided I had to suck it up and go for it. Mile 8 was a 5:39 and mile 9 was a 5:26. I moved into 9th place and was gaining on 8th. I checked my watch and thought I could catch 8th place in this last mile. However, the course turned left and there was the finish line! I looked down again and my watch read 9.4 miles! Oh well, not catching that guy! Mile 10 was only 0.65 miles and I came across the 9.65 mile race in 55:25 for 9th place.
So it wasn't a perfect day, but I am very happy with my fitness. My average pace for the run was 5:44/mile (which was my 5K pace in a race last December) and I definitely wasn't exhausted afterwards. If this was a half marathon, I pretty certain I would easily break 1:20:00. Since things didn't go according to plan, I am going to sign up for another half marathon on May 1st to try to PR. It is the same race I PR'd at two years ago. However, given yesterday's run on a rolling WINDY course, my new goal time is 1:18:00.
So I will put in another hard week this week with a tempo run on Tuesday and my last big track workout Thursday and a 10 mile distance run over the weekend before resting up for the race.
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