Well, the 1:50 guy eludes me again! The race results are still not up on the Internet, so I might be updating later. It was overcast and chilly at the start: perfect running weather. The race was a loop that started and finished in roughly the same place, and very flat. I was feeling very good going into it, but probably not as good as my last half in San Diego. I was expecting to PR, because I've done an 18-mile run since then, so my endurance is even better. Looking back over last week, though, I did a tempo run, added a mile to one of my daily easy runs, and ran 5 miles yesterday. Maybe I overdid it a little bit???
I started slower than I wanted to, as usual. Mile 1 was 8:45 (also, no chip timing, and I crossed the start line about 10 seconds after the gun went off, but the gun time is my official time, so it will have to do). Next four miles were 8:45, 8:37, 8:38, and 8:38, still too slow. I picked up the pace earlier in the race than normal, though. I had about 90 seconds to make up when I hit the halfway point, so I thought I was in good shape. I started picking up the pace a little bit at that point to start making up for some of the lost time and ended up being right on pace, for the most part. Miles 6 thru 10 were 8:30, 8:24, 8:24, 8:31, and 8:16, with a Gu right after mile 6. Once I hit mile 11, though, I just couldn't pick it up anymore. Mile 11 dropped back down to 8:30. When I saw 1:34 at mile 11, I knew that a PR was out of the question (just couldn't go any faster!), but I was hoping I could do at least as well as last time (1:51:29). I had another Gu at 11. Mile 12 was 8:33. I totally lost it, though, and ran mile 13 at my slowest pace of the race at 8:52. Final .1 was 36.5 seconds, a 7:11 pace. Overall pace was 8:34.
This was the first time I have ever run out of gas at the end of a half. I'm not really sure what went wrong. I thought I was doing it right by picking up the pace earlier so I wouldn't have to pick it up so much at the end. Mile 13, and the lack of chip timing, caused my time to be slower than my last half.
It seems that I have hit a plateau in the last month. If anyone has any advice on how to improve from here, I'd love to hear it! Maybe it's time to add tempo runs back into my training.....
This race will officially count for this coming week's mileage, but I'll add it onto last week's mileage, which finally puts me back over 40 miles for the week (40.6)!
Well, this is too funny!!! I will now never know my official time or placing because...the event coordinators messed up. According to the official results online, I ran a 1:25:40 and got 2nd in my age group (behind someone I ran cross country with in high school) and 8th overall!!! That's a 6:30 pace-maybe it can be my long-term goal. Ha!! Actually, it looks like I was 14th in my age group and 77/333 for overall females. They didn't post overall results. Hey, I'll take a mistake like this! |