Ran the St George Half Marathon today. I was really happy with the effort and result, and with how my body felt the whole way. It was beautiful weather: sunny and upper 30s at the start, with little or no wind. Probably mid-40s by the finish.
We all drove down on Thursday, and stayed with Clyde and Mik'l. Hiked and lounged on Friday, and enjoyed the lovely sunshine. It was sooo nice. Got up at about 6:30AM on Saturday, then drove over to Starbucks to grab some coffee. Had oatmeal and a banana for breakfast. Clyde and I drove to the start at about 8:10AM, then did a 4-mile warmup with Logan and Dave. After a few potty-stops and a few strides, I was all ready to go. My training has been moderate to low thus far this winter, but I had been starting to ramp up mileage and workouts over the past 3 weeks or so. I hadn't tested myself and I didn't really know what kind of shape I'm in, so this race would be a good fitness indicator. Sub-1:10 was my main goal, and sub-1:09 would be even better, just depending on how my body responds. And more than anything, I just wanted to get my legs moving and compete a little bit to gain some extra motivation.
The race started on time (all-in-all, it was pretty well-organized). I wanted to ease into the race, and thankful the field allowed me to do so. By the end of the first mile, Jeff, Fritz, and I had separated ourselves out from the pack, but Mile 1 was just a 5:29. We sped up only slightly for Mile 2, which was 5:27. Things got a little bit more interesting during the third mile, as we eased into a 5:14 split. This mile didn't feel a whole lot hard than the first two, so it was a good sign that I was warmed up. During the 4th mile, we dropped Fritz, and it was now just Jeff and I for the remainder of the race. Mile 4 was 5:00, so a pretty nice surge. Jeff and I kept it moving for the next two miles, with splits of 5:12 and 5:10. Everything was feeling really good, and I was enjoying the course, including the rolling hills. Mile 7 slowed to 5:21 for whatever reason, perhaps because of a fairly steep hill up above the river? Through 7 miles, Jeff and I were running side-by-side, and keeping intermittent conversation. However, I did not want this race to come down to a sprint with Jeff, and I was wanting to make a major push sometime during the second half to gain some separation.
Mile 8 was 5:00, and then Mile 9 was 5:15. Jeff was starting to run behind me, rather than to my side, and I thought that might be a sign that he might be tiring. (I still felt great). During the 10th mile, we were along the river bottom, which is pretty flat, and I started pressing pretty hard. I could feel Jeff drop back a little bit, which gave me encouragement to keep going with the surge. Also during that mile, a race called "Rival Relay" was advertising along the course, and had signs up about "beating your rival" and stuff like that. It also had a "red vs. blue" rivalry theme with their signs. I thought those signs were kind of funny, since Jeff is my rival, and I was wearing red and he was wearing blue. Believe it or not, those signs actually motivated me to run harder and to try and seal the deal against Jeff. We have been pretty evenly matched over the last couple years, and have traded races at various distances. Beating Jeff is no easy task, and I enjoy running against him. Mile 10 was 4:59. I followed it up with 5:08 on Mile 11, which included a substantial uphill. This opened up about a 15-second gap.
During Mile 11, the second loop merged with the first loop, meaning I was sharing the course with other runners. At first it was okay, because the pace cart was moving people to the left. But eventually the path narrowed and the cart had to stop, so then it was up to me to wade my way through the masses. And here is where I had a pretty bad lapse that almost cost me the race. I thought Jeff was dropped, and combined with dodging all the people, I was lulled mentally to sleep. Mostly I was just trying to dodge people, and neglected to maintain the pace. I was surprised to hit Mile 12 in 5:27 (despite still feeling great), but figured Jeff was still back and didn't worry about it. But near the final bridge, without warning, Jeff suddenly whizzed right by me, at what appeared to be a dead sprint. That "woke" me up pretty quick, and I was instantly angry at myself, and tore off after Jeff and caught him quickly. We then ran "side-by-side" for a while (I put that in quotes, since we were constantly splitting in different directions to dodge people on the dirt). I knew by my watch that the turn into the Dixie Center should be coming soon. I was a bit worried about missing it, since it was utter chaos on the course, so I was hoping it would be marked with a huge neon sign or something. We went by the dirt path that was the turn, and some people in red vests mumbled something at us, and I thought I heard the word "turn" and "second mile". But I didn't see any signage, I didn't know what "second mile" meant, and no one yelled at us after we had gone by. So we kept going, still side-by-side, but I had a nagging in the back of my mind that perhaps those people were making a feeble attempt to get us to turn. But it was so crowded, so chaotic, and rather loud, so it just wasn't registering for me. After Jeff and I had gone another 200m, I was looking hard for the Dixie Center, and finally found it...behind us! At this point I knew we must turn around, and I told Jeff so. After a brief "are you sure?" "Yeah" dialog, we both turned around and headed back. I perhaps had a step on him. We made the turn, which was indeed the real turn, and then the next challenge was to find the final turn into the chute. I figure out where the turn/chute was, and then started a kick. I had done too much work to lose this race in a sprint. I made the turn, could see the finish line, and let it all out with 250-300m to go. It was the longest and hardest I've kicked since probably college (10 years ago). But after getting out-kicked at almost every recent race where I've been close to people (Indy Mini, Utah Valley, Des News, ...), I was not going to let it happen this time. It was a good finish, and I held Jeff off by about 3 or 4 seconds. Final time was 1:09:38. I had 6:56 for the last 1.1. Usually my last 1.1 is about 5:30-5:40, so perhaps we would have been around 1:08:20, which actually isn't too far off my PR. I had no goal of getting a PR today, so this was a pleasant surprise. Aside from the mental lapse during Mile 12, and the missed turn at the end (I wished I had scoped out the finish better during warmup), this was almost a perfect early-season race for me. Every time I wanted to push, my body responded, and I felt great the whole way. It was great to win a sprint to the finish, and my confidence and motivation are up for the next month of training. It's hard to train in Logan during the winter, so I really needed this boost. This was a step in the right direction for hitting that sub-2:19 at Boston in April.
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