This weekend was Grandma's Marathon weekend in Duluth. I was lucky enough to be selected for a half marathon spot via their lottery system.
I did very few long training runs leading up to this event. Other than Goldy's 10 Mile and pacing the two hour group for the Maple Grove Half Marathon, I haven't even approached a ten mile run this spring. I feel like I'm in pretty good shape, but distance training has been at a minimum.
I went into the race trying to beat my previous best of 1:50:35 which was established in 2006 at the Urban Wildland Half Marathon. At that time I was prepping for the Twin Cities Marathon.
We arrived in Duluth on Friday and had a relaxing evening of dinner with our hosts/friends. We went to bed around 9:30 and set the alarm for 4am (ouch!). I was up a few minutes before the alarm. We had breakfast of a bagel with peanut butter and a banana, and caught the bus to the starting area at around 4:50am.
We had a long wait before the 6:45am start of the race. I worked my way through the thousands of people and found the 1:50 pace group leader. I knew that he'd bring us in just under 1:50, which would beat my goal. This works out to about an 8:23 mile.
It was very crowded over the first mile. I found myself doing some zig-zagging, but managed to keep my eye on the pacer and not let him get too far out of sight. By about mile 4 it was pretty easy to stay within 20 feet of him. He did not walk through water stops (he never drank!) which is my habit, so I had to catch up after every water stop. Eventually I just got ahead of him leading up to the water stops so we'd even out after them.
The miles really flew by. I never realized how often I check my watch and focus on timing until this race when I didn't have to think about it. By about mile 11, I was pretty sure I could stick with him until the end but it would be a challenge. The sun was out and the day was warm and muggy.
When we got into Duluth with a couple miles to go, the crowd really helped me through the tough parts. When we finally got to the DECC around mile 12.5, I asked the pacer how much time we had "in the bank" and he said about a minute. Then I knew I had it in the bag. It felt terrific to finish. I could have maybe finished 30 seconds or so faster if I went all out for this race, but not much more (if any). Here are the splits:
1 - 8:55
2 - 8:12
3 - 8:04
4 - 8:13
5 - 8:08
6 - 8:06
7 - 8:20
8 - 8:26
9 - 8:20
10 - 8:14
11 - 8:17
12 - 8:21
13 - 8:16
13.1 - 7:59 pace
Total chip time: 1:49:12
5K: 25:55
10K: 51:41
19 mile: 1:23:13
Sunday, June 17, 2012
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