Great Salt Lake Half Marathon today. I've been gearing up for this race for a while. Not because I love it, but because I hate the course so much. It is painfully flat and straight, smells bad, and has a tendency to chew me up and spit me out. So I felt like I had something to prove on this course, and I knew any time I put up would be 100% earned. It would also give me a good benchmark for my chance of OTQ at St. George. I figured sub-1:10 is worth an "A" qualifier at St. George. My best time on this course are 1:14:00, from 2004. I drove one hour to the start, picked up my packet, and warmed up 2 miles by myself. I bumped into Sasha before my warmup, and he mentioned that Teren Jameson was here. I decided that if he went out under control, I would try to hang with him. Temperature was about 70 degrees, with overcast skies. Very little wind at the start line. So pretty decent conditions for an August race along the Wasatch Front. I'd prefer 20 degrees cooler, but I'll take it. At start, I spotted plenty of strong competition. If my somewhat risky plan of starting with Teren went haywire, Joe, Dennis, and Sasha would be there to eat me up. The race started close to on time. Teren and another guy who I didn't know got out hard, and after a moment of indecisiveness (do I really want to do this??) I got on their heels. Pace definitely felt harder than what I was used to, but not out of control. During races, I set up my Garmin to just show total time and lap time, and have auto mile splits taken for me, so I only receive pace feedback once per mile (if I kept my usual settings, it would distract me to no end). I would only be using my Garmin for splits, as the GSL mile markers are notoriously bad. First mile split was 4:50. Yikes! I hung in there behind Teren and the other guy (who turned out to be Patrick Smyth, a current Notre Dame runner), and waited to see if they would settle down. Second mile was 5:03. Third mile was 5:07. Doing some mental math, I realized I had just run a 15:35 5K on a pancake-flat course at elevation, just barely slower than my Draper Days time. Stupid. At this point, I knew that: 1) I certainly couldn't hold this pace; 2) Teren and Patrick were NOT slowing down. I let them go after Mile 3 and tried to settle into my race. My goal was to hit 5:15 pace and establish a good rhythm, and hopefully finish with a 1:09 or under. To an extent, I was successful in doing this over the next 5 miles. Mile 4 was 5:16. Mile 5 was 5:11. Mile 6 was 5:20 (approx 10K split of 32:00). Mile 7 was 5:16. Mile 8 was 5:16. So after 8 miles I was still on pace to run a low 1:08. Unfortunately, I still had 5 miles left. Plus, the stench of the Great Salt Lake was starting to get to me. And I was getting very sick of the causeway.
Mile 9 slowed to 5:25. I was okay with this. 5:25's the rest of the way would still yield a killer time. Unfortunately, the causeway started turning southwest, and we picked up a crosswind, that soon turned into a headwind. Fatigue + headwind = slower running. Mile 10 was 5:36. Mile 11 was 5:43. Teren had dropped Patrick some time back and had gapped him. Meanwhile, no one seemed to be approaching me from behind. I figured everyone else was hating the wind as much as me, so I wasn't overly concerned. I found myself actually wanting to get on the island and hit the uphills, just to get some variety and more importantly to get out of the accursed wind! The course finally entered the Antelope Island at the 11.5 mile mark, and I proceeded to climb the first little hill. It actually felt pretty good, helped by the fact that I no longer had a headwind during the climb. Mile 12 was 5:38. There would be no heroics here. Just finish the darn race. The last mile featured a pretty big climb (into the headwind) followed by the a nice decent. The climb just killed and I felt like I had slowed to a crawl. But just over a half mile left! I hit the downhill and worked it well. Mile 13 was 5:39. The course made one final turn, and then the finish chute! Hurrah! I was glad for that one to be over. My final time was 1:10:22. Teren won with an absurd 1:07-something. Patrick was 1:30 ahead of me with 1:08:50-ish. Joe and Dennis were about 3 minutes behind me with 1:13:30-ish. My Garmin measured 13.19 miles. I'm prone to believe this could be GPS error, but if several other people measured long as well, I may be prone to believe the course was a little long. But for now, I'll assume it was legit. Cooled down 4 miles afterward.
Despite missing my goal of breaking 1:10, I felt pretty good about the race afterward. I think without the headwind, I would have actually made my goal, despite running stupid the first three miles. But I even felt pretty good about running stupid. I would like to be as fast as Teren someday, and running with him for three miles showed me what that was like, and the amount of work it would take to reach that level. But I see no reason why I can't run at that level someday. Work work work. Keep dreaming, keep striving.
And frankly it was exciting to average 5:00/mile for the first quarter of a half marathon...and still survive to finish decent. If I could run the race all over again, knowing how everyone finished, I probably would have run it the same way. Today was a good learning and physical experience. My time, even with dying off a bit and the headwind, showed me I am still on track for at least a "B" qualifier at St. George. I am about to enter my last training cycle before St. George, and it will feature some 100-mile weeks, and oodles of MP and LT running, all uninterrupted by races. (I will run some more races, but only as workouts, no tapering). Lots of hard work ahead; the taper is still long ways off! (1120: 198 miles)
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