Grandma's Half Marathon - June 2012

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