The Renegade

Hey Everyone! I know I haven't posted on here in forever but I wanted to write an entry about this race while it was still fresh in my mind. I'll probably go back and do short entries to make up for all the months I missed when I have time after finals. Here's the entry:

AM: Woke up at 4:30 thanks to my Grandma, because I guess I had forgotten to set my alarm clock, close one! Got up got ready, and had an assorted breakfast of a banana, an egg on whole wheat toast and some pineapples. Left with my dad for the race. Took us a bit longer to get to the start because of road closures but eventually I just got dropped off up the hill from it and walked/jogged down. Great atmosphere there already, and the very first signs of light were showing. Went to the restroom which was like a 30 second wait (very impressed) then headed to the track to warm up. Jogged three laps, did stretches and drills then stripped the warmups and did some strides, dropped off my gear then headed to the start. I got to be in the fastest corral so that was really nice. Talked to fellow Loganite Jesse Dunn who was running the marathon with a goal time of 2:30. Perfect, perfect weather for a race. Pretty soon, we were on our way. 

I really made sure to just feel it out in the first few miles, and stayed super relaxed, putting out very little effort but was still doing low 6s high 5s because of the downhill. There were a couple uphills I wasn't expecting but they werent bad at all. As we made our way downtown a lot of the people I was running with had dropped me but I stayed calm. There was this guy in tights that I ran with all the way down City Creek Canyon then we turned onto South Temple which was gradual uphill for about a mile and he pulled away a bit. This was also where I turned up the effort level and was running 6:10-6:20 pace. Sun was blinding me for this whole stretch which wasn't very nice. I passed the same guy right before we turned south. It was downhill again at this point and I was back to 6 flat pace and tried to relax. Ran for about a mile in this direction and the I sort of felt a heart palpatation I guess? But I'm sure if it was full fledged. Here I decided to take a gel which was ironically right before I came to an aid station with a ton of it, but good to be prepared. Turned up a pretty steep hill and I suffered for two blocks climbing it, and I could feel it in my legs from there until the finish. Didn't have much of a pop that you would hope to have at the end of a race but I just pushed myself and kept the pace under 6:30 and no faster than 6:15. Was really starting to suffer right before mile 13 but just hung in there. By now the bikers were on the course with us which was fetching annoying having cyclists fly by you when you are trying to focus on the race. The guy in the tights had passed me again and I caught him with a half mile to go but then faded again and he pulled away from me. Held that position to the finish and just kept my eyes on the arch. I looked at the elapsed time for the first time in the entire race and it said 1:18 so that was really a mood boost knowing that I would finish in the low 1:20s. Pretty great race relative to other long races I've had. Love that feeling after you finish, it's what running is all about. 

Stuck around for a few hours waiting for my age group award and watching the marathon finish. Turns out they never gave them out and they'll ship it to me. Haha my age group is proably the easiest to win anyways because all the high school runners are doing track this time of year. The next guy in my age group was like 8 minutes back. Cooled down a mile eventually. I was having doubts in my mind that I could break 3 hours at Ogden but they have been completley blown away after this race. Ogden has the same ratio of elevation loss as this race had, and the common formula is half marathon time x 2 + 10 minutes. That comes out as 2:52. Of course I'm going to take a more conservative and approach though and will probably just shoot for 1:30 through the half.

PM: 2 miles really easy back at home to shake out the legs, but really to hit 60 for the week and almost 18 for the day. Could really tell that I had raced a half marathon that morning haha.