This was event 8 of 10 to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in memory of my friend Adam Milne. In 2007, I ran this same half and have been wanting to repeat it ever since because it is a fast, fun course (and is my half marathon PR). Originally thought I could train to break 1:25 and qualify for the NYC marathon, but I was not able to train properly. Two marathons and a 1/2 IM really took it out of me. So, if I don’t do a marathon in 2012, that would not be the worst thing.
At the start, I was all the way up front… next to the 1:30 pacer. I have no idea why everyone else lined up so far back, but I was specifically told by the 1:30 pacer to line up next to him. So I did, and there are a series of awkward looking photos as a result. Clearly, I was not the fastest person there (nor did I really think I was) because when the gun went off I was nearly trampled by the exceptionally fast runners. My strategy was to just run it as fast as I could, at an even effort level. I was actually on pace for about a PR for the first 10 miles, but then sun came out and the course got hilly (rolling) so that slowed me down a bit. The last 2 miles were pretty painful; I can’t remember last time I tried that hard at a race. In the end, I did much better than I thought I would given the lack of real speed training and felt good about keeping my pace and effort up despite being in zone 4 heart rate the whole time. There were double the number of entrants compared to the last time I ran it and I placed better percentage-wise too. Also, I got another top finisher mug, so that’s a cherry on top.
Time: 1:28:26 Pace: 6:45
Place: 37/1199 overall, 31/519 men, 12/78 M35-39
Age graded: 69.2%
so nice of you to run a 1/2 on my birthday so I didn’t have to!
Sorry I missed your birthday!