Red-nose Half Marathon - Columbus Georgia - Not a bad effort for me. Friends from my church told me about this race - which is free to enter if you do not want a race t-shirt - in a town south of Atlanta on the border of the state with Alabama. It was about 2.25 hour drive for me from my house north of the city - so I had to hit the road by 5 am to arrive in time to pick-up my race number for the 8 am start. We had six members or family members from our church participate.
My goal for the event was to use it as a tester/tempo in my preparation for the Tokyo marathon at the beginning of March. I had been feeling reasonably well and somewhat confident that I could run 1:40 and not overreach with that type of pace and risk injury or bonk. The night before I had some type of GI issue that made me question whether I would even be able to run today - thankfully that mostly subsided by the morning.
It rained all the way on my drive to the race - and for the first mile or two ran in a light drizzle. Temps were in the low 50's - a good bit warmer than my area which was in the low 40's to upper 30's. The route wound through the downtown area on some brick streets for a couple of miles before dropping us onto a paved bike path along the Chatahoochee River. I had expected the route to be flat, but there were a few mild rollers up and down the embankment. The race had enough participants that they had pacers designated for 1:35, 1:40 etc.
I started out thinking I would run off of the 1:45 pacer - but he was a bit slow and so I allowed myself to run to feel comfortable but not pushing too much - which had me about 40 meters behind the 1:40 pacer. I noticed however that my distance from him did not really seem to change much for the first half of the race. My Garmin was providing splits between 7:30 and 7:45 for most miles and so I reasoned that if I kept him in sight and felt well enough in the last few miles I could catch him (or pass him) to hit the 1:40 goal.
As we approached the turn-around I found myself gaining on the pacer to where I caught him at about 8 miles. He had no one running with him and around the time I caught him, two other runners caught him as well - and I think we all realized that we were running faster than him so we continued to pull away from him. In my mind, with my splits showing sub 7:30 for most of the last 5 miles and being in front of the 1:40 pacer, I thought my time was going to be high 1:38 or 1:39 but I was surprised in the last tenth of a mile - a quick corner turn with less than 100 meters, that my time was 1:40:12. Had I been looking at my total time on my watch I probably would have pushed a bit harder to get under 1:40 but honestly, I was running about as fast I could have today still being under control.
Pleased overall with the pacing and the result and where I am compared to a year ago with two fairly significant injuries. I think I ran negative splits and actually raced a bit over the course - never giving up a place. In fact I think I was 92 at the turn and ended up 79th overall in a race of around 750 runners.
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