Salt Lake half marathon yesterday. It's been a busy week and still looking forward to Ogden marathon in four weeks so I didn't know how to pace this run. I was worried about the effects of a long run I did on Monday but I'm way under my goal mileage needed for marathon training so I had to just see how it goes. My uncle is Lieutenant Ewell, who is the police officer who runs the command center that organizes all the police coverage for these races (also the USATF Masters Chair). He had got me a comp entry to the race and told the race director I'd run it as fast as the other masters so I had to hit it fairly hard.
I met up with Scott and friends for a ride up to the start. Thanks guys! Then attempted to find a porta potty in 15 minutes along with some 20,000 other people. That didn't work so I had to hydrate a tree on the University campus and run to the start as fast as I could. When I got to the start it was amazing. There was no way to get any where near the start and so I jumped the rail tracks to climb the fence over and got yelled at by the police. Finally I had to settle with pushing my way through a thousand runners to find the start. I spoke with Rob and Nathan at the start for a few minutes which was great.
The race seemed to start downhill slightly for the first few miles and just clipped by. I hung on Nathan H. and Danny for about 5 miles with Albert Wint. They all run with strides that look like an easy jog and there I am clomping along. My GPS started and then stopped so I had to start it again, but Albert tracked our miles. 5:04 mile 1, 5:08 mile 2, 5:07 mile 3. Albert and I were talking about the Ogden half last week and he looked at the splits and says crap, we gotta slow down and so we tried. I think I added about 5-6 seconds a mile from that point but I knew I had to take advantage of the downhill and pay the price later on the climbs. I got passed by a runner in one of those triathlon outfits that I can't believe a man can bring himself to go out the door in. He kept going at the marathon turn so I've been wondering how he did and who he was since he was running at a 5:06 pace or so.
The race was a ton of work at the end. I took a wrong turn by going straight at Liberty park instead of turning in it, thankfully an officer yelled at me and I turned back around. There just wasn't anyone around until outside of Libery park and then you had to weave in and out of walkers the whole way in. I had my pace figured at about 15 seconds a mile fast at mile 9 so I felt I could slow it up that much for the last 4 and be on goal. I think Albert and Rob were catching up to me through theses miles.
I had some bad blisters from this one. My feet were so hot when I took my shoes off it amazed me. I'm sure the blisters were just from the heat. The bottoms of my feet felt like they were burned. This is the second race in these Nike Lunar racers and although I like how they feel I can't use them if they keep doing this to me! | 