Today I ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon. I ran it in 1:52, with a bathroom break in there, and to be honest, I'm pretty happy with that time, which is way slower than my course pr of 1:45. My watch clocked the distance a little long and had me running 8:26 miles. The official time had me at 8:37. Might have been the piss stop. Who knows?
I came into the race with very low expectations. I have been fighting off some kind of cold picked up during the last couple of weeks on the road, my training had completely nosedived the last part of Feb and all of March, and I had done very little speedwork. I had been traveling a lot, and work has been through the roof lately. Getting up and running at 5am after being up till 11 working was getting difficult to the point where it wasn't happening.
The one thing I did have going for me was that I had put in some good base work in late December, all of January and early February. Lots of miles on the road, most of them firmly in the 'base pace' category, but I did get some hill sprints and even some Yasso 800s in. Plus a lot of time up skate skiing. In late Feb the travel kicked up again, and training dropped off. Before I knew it, the race was the next day, and I was barely walking up the stairs without getting winded -- whatever virus du-jour that was on the airplane with me had come home to roost.
So it was with a completely open mind and detached head that I showed up the morning of the race. I jogged the 1 mile to the start, which was great to loosen up the legs. When a race starts a mile from your house, you've got little excuse to avoid it -- I was cracking jokes with the course marshals on the way in ("what do you mean the race hasn't started yet? I thought I was just having a great day!")
On the starting line I was overwhelmed by a feeling of irrational exuberance. Just f*ing happy to be there and be alive. No idea why. But, prior to a big endurance event (and this counts as one for me), feeling irrationally exuberant is just the right place to be. For a brief, fleeting moment, I felt 20 years younger and stronger.
Lopa always wonders out loud why I run these events. She does these kind of things with friends, so she can have someone to talk to. Well, I don't like talking, especially when I'm out of shape :) Truth is I do feed off of the other people at the events -- just being around people running makes it so much easier, especially since I train alone -- between travel and work and family, training is something I do when I have time, not when it's convenient for anyone else. When I'm at a race the paces that feel hard feel easy, and when it gets hard there is always someone ahead of me to focus on. My best races have felt very painful, but afterwards I can always look back and say 'hey, that was pretty damn fast!'
Of course there was going to be none of that today. I felt better than yesterday, but still not in PR shape. My speed is nonexistent, and my endurance was questionable. I had decided in a fit of conservative pacing to try to break 2 hours, sticking to 9 minute miles.
The gun went off and of course I wanted to stretch a little. Keeping an 8 minute mile pace was easy with everyone around, and I had to put the brakes on.
I usually suck at pacing. It's like I have a devil on one shoulder, poking me with his pitchfork, saying "Faster! Faster! This feels Awesome!" and an angel on the other shoulder saying "whoah there. Let's not get too excited, we're a mile into a 13 mile run". Yeah, I think the angel sounds pretty lame too.
Today was different, either I'm maturing mentally or physically -- which, btw, is not a good thing for someone in their 40s. My newfound mental or physical maturity enabled me to hold back. I didn't want to explode on the back half of the course, which I've done before when running with a slight cold. I kept the pace around 8:30, and really had to work on holding back.
At mile 6, I started to take the brakes off, slowly, just to see how I was feeling. Because I had been sick I had no idea if I would explode once I picked up the pace. Of course, miles 7-10 are where the rollers are, and those kick my ass whether I run them fast, slow, or backward. It wasn't a 'here comes the BOOM' kind of moment, but on the other hand it wasn't a 'The Di-Lithium Crystals are crackin, Capn Kirk' moment either. I basically held it even at 8:30 or so during that phase, which is a slow grinding uphill with short downhill sections.
Mile 10-11 are a fast, sweeping downhill, and 11-12 has the toughest hill on the course. I finish on this hill with most of my training runs, and thought I was prepared for it. It still hurt, it was still really hard, and I had to dig into my bag of tricks to make it up the hill. I attached a mental rubber band to someone that had come by me and pulled myself up the hill that way.
Miles 12-13 were heavy fatigue miles. I knew the barn was close, but the legs were starting to feel it, my calf was twinging a bit and the burn was consistent. This race ends with a nice steep uphill, and when I started up it, I felt like someone had turned up the gravity. And coated the road with molasses. I played my last mental trick ("I'm a bird! I can fly!") and got across the line.
My watch, which is normally pretty accurate, went a little long on the course. I'm pretty sure they are right and Garmin is wrong in this case, but Garmin has been very right in the past, so I'm wondering why my watch shows me running 13.3 miles instead of 13.1.
Summary:
I came into the race with very low expectations. I have been fighting off some kind of cold picked up during the last couple of weeks on the road, my training had completely nosedived the last part of Feb and all of March, and I had done very little speedwork. I had been traveling a lot, and work has been through the roof lately. Getting up and running at 5am after being up till 11 working was getting difficult to the point where it wasn't happening.
The one thing I did have going for me was that I had put in some good base work in late December, all of January and early February. Lots of miles on the road, most of them firmly in the 'base pace' category, but I did get some hill sprints and even some Yasso 800s in. Plus a lot of time up skate skiing. In late Feb the travel kicked up again, and training dropped off. Before I knew it, the race was the next day, and I was barely walking up the stairs without getting winded -- whatever virus du-jour that was on the airplane with me had come home to roost.
So it was with a completely open mind and detached head that I showed up the morning of the race. I jogged the 1 mile to the start, which was great to loosen up the legs. When a race starts a mile from your house, you've got little excuse to avoid it -- I was cracking jokes with the course marshals on the way in ("what do you mean the race hasn't started yet? I thought I was just having a great day!")
On the starting line I was overwhelmed by a feeling of irrational exuberance. Just f*ing happy to be there and be alive. No idea why. But, prior to a big endurance event (and this counts as one for me), feeling irrationally exuberant is just the right place to be. For a brief, fleeting moment, I felt 20 years younger and stronger.
Lopa always wonders out loud why I run these events. She does these kind of things with friends, so she can have someone to talk to. Well, I don't like talking, especially when I'm out of shape :) Truth is I do feed off of the other people at the events -- just being around people running makes it so much easier, especially since I train alone -- between travel and work and family, training is something I do when I have time, not when it's convenient for anyone else. When I'm at a race the paces that feel hard feel easy, and when it gets hard there is always someone ahead of me to focus on. My best races have felt very painful, but afterwards I can always look back and say 'hey, that was pretty damn fast!'
Of course there was going to be none of that today. I felt better than yesterday, but still not in PR shape. My speed is nonexistent, and my endurance was questionable. I had decided in a fit of conservative pacing to try to break 2 hours, sticking to 9 minute miles.
The gun went off and of course I wanted to stretch a little. Keeping an 8 minute mile pace was easy with everyone around, and I had to put the brakes on.
I usually suck at pacing. It's like I have a devil on one shoulder, poking me with his pitchfork, saying "Faster! Faster! This feels Awesome!" and an angel on the other shoulder saying "whoah there. Let's not get too excited, we're a mile into a 13 mile run". Yeah, I think the angel sounds pretty lame too.
Today was different, either I'm maturing mentally or physically -- which, btw, is not a good thing for someone in their 40s. My newfound mental or physical maturity enabled me to hold back. I didn't want to explode on the back half of the course, which I've done before when running with a slight cold. I kept the pace around 8:30, and really had to work on holding back.
At mile 6, I started to take the brakes off, slowly, just to see how I was feeling. Because I had been sick I had no idea if I would explode once I picked up the pace. Of course, miles 7-10 are where the rollers are, and those kick my ass whether I run them fast, slow, or backward. It wasn't a 'here comes the BOOM' kind of moment, but on the other hand it wasn't a 'The Di-Lithium Crystals are crackin, Capn Kirk' moment either. I basically held it even at 8:30 or so during that phase, which is a slow grinding uphill with short downhill sections.
Mile 10-11 are a fast, sweeping downhill, and 11-12 has the toughest hill on the course. I finish on this hill with most of my training runs, and thought I was prepared for it. It still hurt, it was still really hard, and I had to dig into my bag of tricks to make it up the hill. I attached a mental rubber band to someone that had come by me and pulled myself up the hill that way.
Miles 12-13 were heavy fatigue miles. I knew the barn was close, but the legs were starting to feel it, my calf was twinging a bit and the burn was consistent. This race ends with a nice steep uphill, and when I started up it, I felt like someone had turned up the gravity. And coated the road with molasses. I played my last mental trick ("I'm a bird! I can fly!") and got across the line.
My watch, which is normally pretty accurate, went a little long on the course. I'm pretty sure they are right and Garmin is wrong in this case, but Garmin has been very right in the past, so I'm wondering why my watch shows me running 13.3 miles instead of 13.1.
Summary:
- I guess this shows that you can get a good base, slack on training for a month and a half, and still have a reasonably good time.
- However, my speed really needs work. Time to get that Mercer Island High School Track pass.
- The course is tough. I wonder what I would clock on a flatter course?
- I love this distance. It really stretches me without the killer 3 hour long runs that marathon training requires. I can have a life and run half marathons.
