The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

Just 7 short days after coming away from Savannah with a shiny new PR, I decided it would be wise to run another 1/2 marathon locally with my brother-in-law.

The results were posted just a little bit ago and it is official.

A new PR! Or maybe we should call it a PW?

Either way, by 53 seconds I was able to take my worst 1/2 time and beat it. How is that even possible?

My worst time ever had been held by my 1st 1/2 ever back in 2007. It was 2:49:05. My time on Saturday was 2:49:58.

It was as painful as it sounds.

This was on a course where I had trained EXCEPT I had not trained on the hilly portion in the middle. My ego was slightly inflated so I figure why not right? Bad idea.

The race started off pretty swell but things went downhill (or shall we say uphill) pretty quickly as soon as I hit mile 6.

As soon as I reached the first hill I literally stopped and laughed. This was not going to be good.

It wasn't. 3 miles of hills. I'm not sure what the actual ascent was but my brother-in-law said it was about 400ft. Those my friends were not hills. They were mountains.

Actually, we were running on the mountain bike trails part of which was gravel. Fun times!

Either way, I finished. It took every fiber of my being not to get on the golf cart I saw at the bottom of the hill at mile 9.

Are there any positives? Sure.

• 
  
  I finished.


• 
  
  It was a beautiful run. The entire course was on the greenway which runs along the river and then up through the hills before returning to the greenway to finish. I'd do the race again just because it was so pretty.


• 
  
  By finishing, I can see that I am stronger than I was 4 years ago. My time was worse but I can tell you right now that back then there would not have been a PR race the week before nor would I have been able to finish this race at all. Progress.

As for the rest of the year? I'll run some on my own to try and complete 500 in 2011 but no more races for me.

My goal for the rest of the year is to start integrating some swimming and other cross training to come away with some new PRs next year :)

Bling

This one can be checked off of my 2011 goals.

As I said in the recent post, I knew I was ready both physically and mentally.

The race truly went well from start to finish.

It was a little chilly at the beginning of the race, but I quickly got warm once they released my corral to start.

I'd decided to follow the 4:45 marathon pace group knowing that I could just stick with them until the half marathon split off at mile 11. This would be about a 2:22 1/2 marathon which I still felt would be stretch.

I was able to hang with them until at least mile 6 that I remember but somewhere after that is when I dropped back. I'm thinking it was just before or after mile 7 because I'd lost them by the time I arrived at mile 8.

Miles 6-9 were the toughest for me for some reason. I'm pretty sure I got distracted looking for Steve and Lauren. They never saw me and I never saw them. It was a really crowded race both on and off the course. I'll save this information for a post about the race itself.

By mile 9 I had regained my focus, had taken a Gu on top of my Honey Stingers and was ready to push to the finish. I remember thinking "only 40 more minutes".

After that the course also got more interesting as we headed towards the finish in Forsyth Park.

Around mile 10, I saw the 5 hour marathon pace group beside me and realized that I needed to pick it up if I was going to beat my goal of coming in under 2:30.

I kept pushing to the finish but those last few miles felt long. It wasn't that I was struggling but I was so ready to be at the finish line to celebrate my hard work and the fact that I knew I had already had a huge PR.

There was one last turn followed by 2 rolling hills and then the finish.

Looking at the clock I was pretty sure I'd just barely snuck in under my goal.

Official time: 2:28:15.

I'd rocked Savannah!