Uh, this was a rough race for me. I was the roadkill for several people over the course of the last 5 miles or so and if the race was any longer a few more would have caught me. On the bright side, this is about a minute faster than what I ran last year at this course and it was fun to get out and run a lot faster than I have been recently. My plan was to go out at 6 min pace and hold it for as long as possible and then hopefully not fall to pieces. Maybe a dumb plan, but I feel stuck in this rut of running half marathons in the 1:21:00-1:24:00 range and I want to get out of it. So, I tried... 1-6:02 2-5:46 Found myself with James from the blog and one other guy. Melody, Kassi, Scott and a few others were about 20 yards ahead of us. I knew they were gunning for 1:20 or under so I figured I was in good shape. 3-6:06 4-5:52 5-5:52 Right around here I fell back from James and the other guy, and realize I probably need to get things down around to 6:15 or so pace if I want to keep going. The distance to the group ahead was about the same as it had been. 6-6:45 I pulled off to the side of the trail here to pee and lost about 40 seconds, but mentally this killed me. It's not so much that I needed to stop, it's just that my legs were already hurting a bit and it was easy to give in. 7-6:20 I was afraid I was not going to be able to get back on pace after the stop, but was surprised to see this split. This split is all the result of having a girl catch me and running with her, and then Rachelle eventually caught us as well. 8-6:38 Right after the 7 mile split I stopped again for a second. Both girls are long gone now. 9-6:43 Stopping at aid stations. Get passed again for the last time by a guy. 10-6:27 11-6:51 12-6:43 13-6:30 0.1-1:05 So, the first 5 miles were great and then things kind of fell apart. Lots of factors I believe...Boston from a few weeks ago, 20 mile run from last Saturday, 2 weeks of increased mileage, the severe downhill for the first two miles, and just running faster than I probably should have for the first 5 miles of this race. But those were the funnest miles of the race. I got two weeks until the Ogden marathon. Probably dumb to run a marathon just 4-5 weeks after another one, but I think I will be okay and that I can run a good time at Ogden if I can rest up and get my legs back. I'm targeting to run 2:55 there and hope to run it even, so putting together two halves at 1:27:30 doesn't seem too intimidating right now after running this race today. We will see though. PM 3.25 easy on the TM.
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