Day 97

Race day! IVS Half-Marathon.

I drove most of the way to the race and then parked about 1.5 miles away from the start on a side street. I used the 1.5 as a warm up and felt great as I lined up to start the race. The gun went off and we were off!

Distance: 13.1
Duration:1:39:19
Pace: 7:35
HR Avg/Max: 161/183
notes:

Turned out to be a way tougher race than I anticipated. I planned to just go out relaxed and coast the first 10 miles and kick in the last 5k. The problem with this plan was that the course was two laps over the hilliest terrain I have ever attempted. My GPS says there was over 3000 feet of total accent!

All in all I think I raced it well. I started smoothly and didn't let the race day anticipation get the better of me. Many of the runners took off fast when the gun went off but I stayed relaxed and ran my own race and hit the first mile in 7:48. From here I picked up the pace slightly, but focused on running relaxed and within my means. We hit the first big hill at the 1.75 mark and this is when I started passing people. By mile 3 several of the runners who had went out too fast were already walking and I easily must of passed about 30 people as we went up and down rolling hills. I just focused on not slowing down on the uphills and coasting on the downhills to recover. I finished the first loop in 50:15, about a 7:40 pace.

At this point I started running into some trouble. Cardiovascularly I felt fine with my heart rate sitting at 160 but my legs felt shot. It felt as if I had been lifting weights rather than running. My quads were tight and I had a pain in my ass! The next 6.55 was pretty rough. I was by myself at this point with only one or two other runners even in sight since the course was so hilly and winding. I just tried to keep my stride loose and not slow down and as I came to the big hills I just put my head down and didn't look up focusing on one foot after the other until I reached the top. Somehow I didn't slow down and maintained a 7:40 pace even though it seemed that I was going much slower. I think the steep downhill forced sprints must have helped with the pace.

By 10 miles I knew that my plan to kick in the last 5k was out of the question. I just maintained the 7:40 pace and was happy even to do that. The next two miles had a couple more really steep hills and I finally started catching some more runners as they died on the hills. About the 11.5 mile mark we started up the last hill and I knew that after this is would be smooth sailing. I powered up the hill, passing two more runners and even surging as I passed them just to make sure that they were completely demoralized and didn't try to latch on and follow me.

The next .5 miles was down hill and I lengthened my stride and let my body go limp trying to regain as much energy as I could for the final mile.

As I hit the 12 mile mark I consciously picked up the pace. Now I was running hard, but still tried to stay relaxed. With about 800 meters left I saw some two more runners up ahead and decided to really push it so as to catch them. I caught one of them with 200 left but there was still a woman up ahead of me. At this point we came out of the woods into the final straight away. She was still 50 feet ahead but I could tell she didn't have a kick. I went into full sprint mode and finally caught her with about 10 meters to spare. I hit the last 1.1 miles at a 6:40 pace so I guess I had something left after all. It helped that it was flat.


Happy with my finish I did some stretching and cooled down the 1.5 miles back to the car... not nearly as enthusiastic about where I parked as I was during my warm-up.


All in all the race was a positive experience. McMillan running calculator predicts my marathon time at 8:00 exactly based on todays time. Considering how hilly it was I suppose this was a positive sign. On the other hand the last 6 miles were ridiculously hard and I couldn't imagine doing another 13.1 afterwards.

I'm still having trouble hitting an 8:00 minute pace and am really going to have to focus on finding that groove if I want to run a successful race in Chicago.