Sunday, May 9, 2010

Pacers Running Festival - Half Marathon

Today I ran my first ever half marathon, the Pacers Running Festival Half.  The temperature was about mid 50's which was great for running, but the wind made it very challenging in some respects.  I went into the race today without any real training, so my hope was to just finish without injury and try to break 2 hours.  If I didn't accomplish the 2 hour goal, I wouldn't have really cared it was just a hope and a dream.  My race strategy from the start was to run the first half at about 9 minute miles, assess how I feel and then pick it up if possible.  The problem - I don't know 9 minute miles, I ran the first mile just under 9 minutes and thought 'Wow, I actually am sticking to my plan' but then the crowds spread out and somewhat disappeared which let me just run how I felt most comfortable.  So when I got to mile 2 and hit my lap button on the ipod 8:39 popped up, I sped up without even realizing it.  After mile 2 I started to run with a friend from my running group, she had a hire target pace but was more than willing to just run with me at my pace.  I continued to tick off after that about 8:30's for a good portion of the first half ending the first half in 56:13 with 8:35 as my average pace.  Not the 9 minute miles I was planning, but I still felt really good so I didn't mind.  I then continued on while the runners doing the quarter marathon got to head home, after the stretch on 110 I started talking to a new runner and we ended up talking it up a bit just to help each other get through the final miles.  I felt like I was doing pretty well, but when I got to about mile I saw the most amazing thing...Powerade GU!  I grabbed 2, 1 for now and 1 for the next water stop.  When we got to the final stretch I kicked into a coaching mode, it seems to come naturally during races.  It seems that when I get near the end of almost every race I start coaching whoever I'm with, encouraging them and trying to help them finish.  I think it's partially because it helps me take my mind off whatever pain I'm feeling at that moment and focus my attention on motivating someone else.  Almost every mile in the final half we seemed to be ticking off 8:30 miles, so I knew as I was coming to the finish line that I had 2 hours pretty much broken and it made me feel great that I ran a pretty decent race - even when I pretty much stopped training the past 5-6 weeks.  I crossed over the finish line and my official time came to be 1:51:56, with an average pace of 8:33.

Another goal that I had going into the race was to negative split, something I've never done, and I accomplished that too!  Here are all the stats, probably more than you really care to know, but it's something that helps me break down my race.

1 comment:

  1. WOW! I am totally amazed by your splits and how perfect they are. So evenly paced and yet negative at the same time. You totally killed this one. I didn't realize it was your first half, so a huge congrats to you!!!!

    ReplyDelete