Deseret News Half Marathon - 1:41:48 2nd Age Group (55-59)
Perfect race for testing my fitness and downhill legs, plus since running the full marathon here in 2010 have been wanting to come back each year. I've been getting close to signing up for a "last chance" to qualifiy for Boston and was thinking about Big Cottonwood in September.
Weather forecast during the week was not looking so good with heat advisory warnings and based on some forecasts showing a low as high as 79 degrees (but for Salt Lake City, but not sure how much the extra elevation would buy me).
I kept my full training schedule of running including a long run on Saturday, no taper for this race. I knew that could affect my time but hopefully by not that much.
First goal, make it to the start line. My hotel was just a couple miles from the buses, got there in plenty of time and made it to the start line with almost an hour to spare. Warmed up with some easy jogging and a couple of strides. My garmin watch decided to tell me that I'm now acclimated to 2632 feet, wasn't sure if that was helpful or not. Fortunately, I know there altitude doesn't bother me on the downhill and there would hardly be any uphill on this course.
Miles 1-4, a little harder than I thought (7:49, 7:36, 7:41, 7:45)
I was right in front of the 1:35 pacer at the start, let him go by me. Thought with the downhill and excitement I'd have to slow myself to keep from going too fast. Nope. Looked at my pace, around 8:00, slowly picked it up. Thought I'd take it easy until fully warmed up but thought should do at least 7:45. Going into this race, I thougth if I felt good and locked into a pace that was "too fast" I'd just hold onto it as long as I could. Instead I was putting into some effort just to make sure I'd be under 8:00 pace for the race.
The 1:35 pacer was now way ahead and just ahead of me now was the 1:45 pacer with a small group running around and behind her. I wasn't sure the pacing strategy, what was correct? I figured I'd wait a little but at the very least for now I'd follow along.
Miles 5-7 , good times! (7:36, 7:31, 7:32)
I think sometime around mile 4 or so there was a water stop, the 1:45 group kind of evaporated and it was just me running near the pacer. Then suddenly I felt better, maybe there was something in the water. I started running faster and it felt easier. I was cruising to an average pace that could take me under 1:40
Miles 8-10 , lows and high (8:02, 7:26, 8:06)
And just like that the good times were over. All of the sudden the race felt like it was over. Going into the race was not at all worried about mile 8, but I should've have a plan for it. On paper, it's another downhill mile with net 60ish feet of downhill, but it flattens out and there's a little stretch of uphill, this is all after running 7 miles of downhill. But, then the course starts dropping again and suddenly I felt the best I did all race, now I can just hammer it home! Mile 9 was my fastest but the momentum did not carry through mile 10, slowed down again to my slowest mile.
The watch can't make you run faster and maybe it's better not to look at all, but I had my watch on average pace. Maybe lap pace would've been better and maybe I could've given myself a psychological boost if I'd rallied and run mile 8 at 7:59, and maybe I could've stayed under again for mile 10.
Although mile 10 was slower I knew I could at least keep my overall average under 8:00.
5k to go 11-13.1 (7:46, 7:49, 8:03, 0.15@7:07)
Miles 11 and 12 I was sort of hanging on but doing ok, not losing any ground on the sub-8:00 goal. I should've been more pumped up for the 1 mile to go and in hindsight wondered if I had lap pace would mile 13 be sub 8:00? Going into the race, mile 13 was the only one I had worried about as the only mile with net uphill (although such a small net uphill it's really just flat. On the other hand, with mile 13 done and on the final straight stretch, pace didn't matter. I could see the clock still had 1:41 and I could make it in before it hit 1:42
Shortly after finishing got a congratulations text and found out I was second place age group (turns out first place was only about 25 seconds faster). I hadn't even considered age group.
As a predictor race, 3:35 marathon is within the realm of possibility. As for the downhill, legs held up ok and I reeducated myself on the feeling of running flat and/or a little uphill after running downhill - "the monster" that can appear 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the run. I didn't crush the run, so certainly not overconfident, but I didn't bomb it either, it was a pretty good race and of course the scenery was amazing and running along the parade route was great too.
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