Half Marathon PR
Today I ran the Grape Stomp Half Marathon. I finished with a time of 1:26:46, PR’ing by almost a full minute (previous PR was 1:27:42), but that’s really the only good thing I can say about my race. I just did not run a smart race. I made three mistakes that cost me my goal of sub-1:25:00. The first is that I ran the first mile in 6:07 (goal pace was 6:29). The other two mistakes were going off the course. The first time I went off course it was totally my fault. There was a turn right at or just after the seven-mile marker. I was looking at my watch trying to figure out how far behind pace I was, and I ran right past a well-marked turn. I figured it out rather quickly and backtracked, but it still cost me at least 20 seconds. The other time, the trail forked and it wasn’t marked. I went left instead of straight. Both paths joined back together with a third path forming sort of a triangle, but I ran the long way around. Plus I slowed way down at the split trying to figure out which direction to go.
Even though I'm disappointed in my race execution, there are some postives that I can take away from this race. The main one being that I am in pretty good shape. In the future I need more race pace and tempo runs. I also need to run more without my Garmin. I did not wear it today and never felt comfortable with my pace. I just could never tell if I was ahead or behind pace. Another positive is that I pushed through some painful miles at the the end of this race. With three miles to go, it was clear that I wouldn't hit 1:25, so I basically ran for a PR and to not get passed. I was successful on both accounts.
I think if I run this race again, I'll only run the 10K. The 5K, 10K, and half marathon are all out and back courses; but after the 10K turnaround, the course goes out of a nice tree-lined asphalt path and is run on a bike path next to a busy street with basically no shade.
The end result is that I finished 7th overall (out of 158), 4th in the 40-49 age group.
Even though I'm disappointed in my race execution, there are some postives that I can take away from this race. The main one being that I am in pretty good shape. In the future I need more race pace and tempo runs. I also need to run more without my Garmin. I did not wear it today and never felt comfortable with my pace. I just could never tell if I was ahead or behind pace. Another positive is that I pushed through some painful miles at the the end of this race. With three miles to go, it was clear that I wouldn't hit 1:25, so I basically ran for a PR and to not get passed. I was successful on both accounts.
I think if I run this race again, I'll only run the 10K. The 5K, 10K, and half marathon are all out and back courses; but after the 10K turnaround, the course goes out of a nice tree-lined asphalt path and is run on a bike path next to a busy street with basically no shade.
The end result is that I finished 7th overall (out of 158), 4th in the 40-49 age group.
posted by Bart at 9:57 PM
4 Comments:
Congrats on the PR. Nice self-analysis too. There's nothing wrong with being honest with yourself.
Thanks, Zeke. At the one mile mark I made a comment to another runner about going out too fast. He agreed and said something about there being nothing wrong with a quick start in a half marathon. I wanted so bad to believe him, but I knew it would come back to haunt me.
Awesome PR and way to go in that race!Did you see the USMC results?
Thanks, Mark. I haven't seen the military results. The service MWR/sports pages all still list the 2005 results. I'm curious to see if I would have been in scoring contention for the Navy team.
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