Ran the Halloween Half Marathon as the 1:40 pacer with Rob and Kris. 1:40 was perfect for me because it is very close to my natural training pace so I would be able to lock in the pace easily and the run wouldn't be too much of a push.
I will get all of my complaints out of the way here. Traffic in Utah County is a mess, the packet pickup was a complete joke and waiting for the busses for an hour was ridiculous. This race was way too big for one person to handle. If he wants to maintain the size, the RD needs to bring in help. There are a few very simple things that could be done to clean up the biggest issues.
The race started and it was very congested at the start. Once we started rolling, I could tell that Rob and I had a very good sense of what the pace was supposed to be (with the help of the Garmin) but we had to reel in Kris' youthful exuberance. I was very glad to have Rob there with his jokes (even though they were corny) and the pace band he created. Here are our splits compared to the target pace.
| Mile |
Split |
Target |
| 1 |
7:19 |
7:21 |
| 2 |
7:06 |
7;20 |
| 3 |
6:58 |
7:09 |
| 4 |
7:13 |
7:06 |
| 5 |
7:28 |
7:25 |
| 6 |
7:59 |
8:01 |
| 7 |
7:51 |
8:08 |
| 8 |
7:47 |
7:51 |
| 9 |
7:36 |
7:36 |
| 10 |
7:42 |
7:52 |
| 11 |
7:48 |
7:45 |
| 12 |
7:51 |
7:50 |
| 13 |
8:37 |
7:48 |
| 0.1 |
1:07 |
0:47 |
| Total |
1:40:22 |
1:39:59 |
We had a 45 second cushion going into the last mile (due to miles 2, 3, 7 and 10) so we told the group of people running with us to go ahead. We then tried encouraging the runners behind us to catch up to us. We lost more time than we planned but the course was long so in reality being 20 seconds late was due to the extra 0.05 miles that we ran.
This is a great way to participate in a race without having to punish yourself during the run. There is a part of me that feels like a quitter for not actually racing this race and finding an excuse to not push myself. I'm definitely in one of those funks again where I don't feel like much of a runner and am having a hard time doing the things necessary to become a runner again. Overall it was a good experience and I would definitely do it again. | 