The goal is to at least get one race report up before the next one happens and I'm cutting it close on that. I can't help it though. I had company this week and thanks to American Airlines, he stayed in town a few days longer than planned.
This will probably be pretty brief since I seem to have come down with a cold and I'm trying to sleep as much as possible in hopes that this thing will be short-lived.
Okay, the half marathon. Since this race is all women, I knew it would make sense to start close to the front, but I didn't expect the race marshall to point at me and make me stand right ON the starting line. It's a tad unsettling when the runner next to you is Kenyan, but I just kept telling myself "don't start too fast, don't start too fast..."
I started too fast.
Everything just felt so effortless for that first half mile, I almost couldn't understand why I was out in front of other runners who I expected to be running next to. I did finally force myself to relax and chill out and a big pack of women caught up to me by the half mile point. The local masters runner who has motivated me in some other races was there, so I really focused on just trying to stay near her. First mile: 6:35
I really need to get a new running watch and the one I borrowed for this race died even before the gun went off, so I only have a foggy memory of splits, but I think I ended up running the whole race really evenly and my average pace ended up exactly the same as my first mile. The first half felt as if it took more effort than it should have and the the second half (supplemented with two gu packets) seemed easier than I would have expected.
| I felt very strong for the last few miles and gained a lot of ground on the woman in front of me, but as in the 10K, I didn't have anything left for a real kick at the end. But again, it's like in the 10K, when you can see you're going to be happy with your time no matter what, it's easier to just cruise in with a smile. |  |
This race has some particular challenges to it in that you overtake a significant number of walkers and joggers on the second lap of the park and it gets very crowded. I didn't mind running outside the tangent a bit because the crowd support was very motivating, but it sucked to try and weave in through all those people to try and get water. I'm sure that added some seconds to my time, but there's really no point in guessing how many.
The half was scored based on how we finished as two-person teams, with at least one of the team members being over 40, and my partner was Yvonne's mom, visiting from Scotland. Our combined ages put us securely in the middle of the most competitive age group, but we still finished sixth in that and 11th out of all the two person teams.
