AM: Glass City Half Marathon in 1:20:47
This was my first race since Broad Street last year on May 1. Training has been up and down since then and I had two fairly serious lows in training with a decent chunk of time off last summer. I was fairly pleased that I was able to run the time I did as I haven't run too many miles under 6:30 pace in the last 12-16 weeks.
The night before I went to bed around 10:15 as I was falling asleep at dinner. I'm beyond overtired. I woke up not wanting to get out of bed, but it was an hour later than I have been getting up. We stayed with Megan's uncle who lives a half mile from the start line. I warmed up a 1.5 miles, which wasn't quite enough time but I didn't leave myself enough time. I changed into my flats for the first time in almost 365 days.
I decided to start at about 6:30 pace and work my way down. The first few miles I felt pretty rusty, the effort harder than I wanted in my legs but with my breathing comfortable. After two miles I wasn't really feeling it, but I think I was almost actually at 3 miles and didn't realize it. I started cranking down the pace and by miles 4-5 I was feeling decent but wasn't sure how my legs would work or if they would just die.
I went from feeling like I didn't want to run to letting the miles roll by. I recognized many of the places we ran through as I am somewhat familiar with the area. I started passing quite a few people.I knew I had to pick it up the final 5k, but I still wasn't sure what my legs would do. By mile 12 I knew I had a good bit left. I estimate that I was only down to half marathon effort after 4-5 miles. By mile 12.5 I was fully down to end-of race effort.
I ran by the University and started to dig in. I made the turn into the University running 5:39 for the last mile and getting some support from a small but helpful crowd. The chute was clogged by two race volunteers, with whom I was not very pleased (some other lack of directions at a few points in the race make me not want to run the full marathon here. See also Matt from the blog's race report from 2 years ago). I could see the final turf stretch and was somewhat surprised to see 1:20 on the clock and kicked it in, pleased to come under 1:21. I am not sure if I would have raced differently I could have come under 1:20 or not. Slowest half in 4 years, but I'm not upset about that.
I cooled down barefoot on the turf for 3 miles waiting for Megan who ran 1:54:18.
Splits: 6:26, 6:24, 6:25, 6:14, 6:11, 6:01, 6:07, 6:08, 6:10, 6:09, 6:00, 6:10, 5:39, 42.2
PM: I did a 5k walk shakeout and brought some wine with me :-) | 