half marathon

warmup 16:06/125, generously saying 1.4 miles; half-marathon 1:39:12/180.

I almost didn't run this today. I ran a marathon 6 weeks ago and then an unscheduled "redemption marathon" 2 weeks ago. I was sick last week and not totally over it. (On Thursday, I took my second sick day at work in 7.5 years there.) I was also a little worried about not getting in a long run today with the Disney Goofy challenge looming . I decided to drive down there and see what happened. Dismissing last second thoughts of doing it as a training run (something I've never done), I pinned on my number determined to give it the old college try.

The course was advertised as "rolling hills," which when you extrapolate from race director language is a little disconcerting. It more than lived up "rolling hills." I have a baro alimeter in my watch and it shows 469 ascent/489 descent (start and finish are same altitude, discrepancy is change in baro pressure). The A10, which is a local race known for being hilly, was 348/344. Here's a graph with my PR half (blue), A10 (red), and today's race (green).

Other than "hilly," the course is hard to describe. It was mostly on roads through neighborhoods. At the bottom of the first giant hills we went down about 20 stairs (that we later went back up!) and onto a path. We came off the path, onto roads, onto a gravel path that circled a baseball field, back onto roads. We took roughly 400 turns in the race I'd say.

Here are my splits with time/bpm

• 7:33/162 (down hill)
• 7:07/174 (down big ass hill)
• 7:16/179
• 7:19/180
• 7:24/180
• 7:45/181
• 14:50/180 (7:25 pace)
• 7:23/181
• 7:37/181
• 7:29/182
• 8:41/182 (up big ass hill!)
• 7:56/185 (up hill)
• 0:47/191

Total was 1:39:12/180 by my watch. A 50 second PR! My average heart rate was 2 bpm lower than my previous half marathon. I think this is from being sick although truth be told, I wasn't as uncomfortable in the second half of today's race as I was 2 months ago, so I might have had a little more to give, but this was definitely a good effort. Great finish area: Krispy Cremes, bananas, bagels, soup, bagels, beer wagon, and hot pizza!

My half marathon PR is now my fastest pace (7:35 min/mi) at any distance (raced from 8K to marathon), so I should be setting some PRs in the spring.

wr9-1
week
45 miles
wc7-2: 390 + 0 = 390 (need to get this over 400 and done with)
wc7-3: 240 + 14 = 254
wr9-1: 153 + 31 = 184