Ran a new PR of 1:25:58 at the Monumental Half today. It was a good day for running temperature wise but it was very windy (around 20mph) and that would come back to get me toward the end.
I got down to the race early and ran about a 1.5 mile warmup with a few strides. I felt pretty good warming up but still a little flat on the strides. I really felt that I had a shot at 1:25 so I decided to go out at 6:30 pace and see how I felt. I was hoping to get to mile 9 on pace and either hang on or push it depending on how I felt. The race got off to a good start. There were many people that started too close to the front for their pace so I had to work my way through them. Even with that the first mile was good and right on pace. I set my Garmin to do auto laps every mile so I didn't get the splits at the race mile markers. My Garmin had the race as 13.37 so it was way off from the mile splits. After the first mile I was able to settle into a comfortable 6:30 pace. I had to watch myself because a couple of times I was getting a little quick and had to ease it back. I was hitting the race mile markers consistently at 6:30 pace and by mile 8 I was about 15 seconds ahead of 6:30 pace. One cool thing is they had a timing mat at 10k and I went through their in around 40:10 which is a new PR for me in the 10k. I guess I need to run a 10k soon and see what I could do. During this stretch we were supposed to be running downwind but it felt like it was swirling off the buildings and would sometimes be in our face. I knew when we made the turn back to the city we would be running around 3 miles dead into the wind on a very wide city street with little protection from the wind. This was my concern going into the race and I was hoping that I could just hold my pace during this stretch. As we made the turn and headed back to town the wind hit me coming out of the curve and stood me up. I knew then that I would have my work cut out for me to stay on pace. I tried lifting my effort which kept me on pace for a little while. I was passing some people during this stretch so that felt good but I was slowly droping off of my pace. I continued to try to push it but ended up losing around 15 seconds per mile over this 4 mile stretch into the wind. Even though I didn't hit my goal I felt good about the effort. I passed alot of people during this stretch and only got passed by one other runner and that was in the last 50 meters by a young guy who I couldn't hold off in the sprint.
Here are my splits from the Garmin but they are off because of the distance difference but at least shows that I stayed fairly consistent throughout the race.
6:20, 6:22, 6:17, 6:27, 6:25, 6:26, 6:25, 6:28, 6:25, 6:26, 6:37, 6:37, 6:16
This gives me some confidence because this is 2:47 faster than I ran in the same race last year in better conditions. Also, I am starting to believe that I really have a shot at a 3 hour marathon. I am not quiet there yet but feel like I am starting to get closer. | 