Holiday Halfathon Race Report
Views from the middle back pack with some pleasant takeaways. Since the Shipyard half marathon a few weeks ago my legs have been somewhat dead. I did not feel like I was close to PR shape or even getting closer to breaking 1:30 than what I did at Shipyard Half. I had signed up my SO Jessica to run this race again like last year. But last year we each ran our own races. This year she had trained a little bit less than last year (although this year and last year her longest run was 5 miles, she had a few more shorter runs in addition to her 5 mile run). This race is also typically the morning after my work Christmas dinner party. It all added up to taking it easy and running slow.
Morning was not cold, and just cool enough to not be warm at the start. The Madeira Beach town hall where the race starts was completely unrecognizable. The old building which looked typical of a small town beach community town hall was replaced by a very modern looking 21st century building.
Race plan was to run/walk at a 2-1 ratio. Crowd thinned out after a mile or so and we found ourselves passing and getting passed by more or less the same sets of people. There was a couple running in long sleeve running shirts which had a Christmas sweater design that gave the illusion of Christmas sweaters that made me feel hot watching them run. First three miles especially were very comfortable. We tried a couple of 3-1 ratio runs but Jess decided that 2-1 would be better. At the 4 mile mark we are on top of the Park Blvd bridge crossing from the beach islands across the inland waterway to the mainland and on our way to the Pinellas trail at mile 7. At this point she said she was starting to feel the run a bit but was still ok.
There is a little park where we wind around a small lake and then join the Pinellas trail heading north. There's a restroom there where I said I was going to stop as there seemed to be no line (at least in the men's side). Women's side had a small line so we suffered about a two minute delay for the stop. Up until then we had been keeping our miles under 12:00, maybe 11:30's to 11:40's.
Next up was the first pedestrian bridge which we walked up and resumed running at the top. Jess lagged behind a little bit, so for the next one I had an idea.
Weather was warming up a little but still felt very nice.
I think about mile 9 or so, Jess asked if we could switch to a 1-1 ratio. It really didn't hurt our pace that much. We had slowed down to right about a 12:00 pace, and the 1-1 ratio slowed us to about a 12:30. But the goal was to finish. Here and there, when we were getting close to the next mile but would not hit it during the run portion I'd say "let's just keep running until after that mile marker up ahead".
Comming up the next pedestrian bridge, we walked and I took Jess's hand and gave her a little tow up the bridge. On the other side of the bridge, a 50ish woman with long grey hair, very fit , and wearing candy cane stockings and Santa hat remarked about how sweet looked and how this is what running was all about.
Not long after the last bridge, the course turns off of the Pinellas trail and into Taylor Park where you can see the finish area but then you run back out to a road before coming back into the park. After the 12 mile sign we increased our running intervals a little bit. As the plan evolved and we settled around a 12:00 average pace I was thinking around 2:36 would be good. But we had slowed and lost a little bit of time at the restroom so new goal was stay under 2:40.
Finish line finally just around the corner, I encouraged Jess to run ahead to finish before me. But she kind of foiled my plan by slowing as we went under the finish arch but before actually crossing the timming mat so I inadvertantly beat her by 0.2 seconds.
My first time running this race Dec 2006, just before turning 40, so I've been here for nearly every one of the 10 races as either a runner or a spectator with this being my first year as pacer. The course is every bit as good running in the back two thirds as it is running in the top 5%. They've added more aid stations since the first year I ran it.
I did still get a chance though to walk up to the podium to pick up awards - not my awards, but still - speedy Jolene placed first female Masters and comeback kid Mike (who blogged here for a while) picked up 2nd place Grand Master.
I still need to look out for and introduce myself to two super fast local FRBers Mike M and Andrew who also ran this year.
And one gift I received (among other things) was my dead leg feeling has completely gone away, re-intro to back-to-back long runs (12 miles yesterday, 13.1 today), run-walk practice (will come in handy for Georgia Death Race).
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