Race Report- Corvallis Half Marathon – 4/14/13

Executive Summary: Debut half marathon complete in 1:56:00, beating my original goal by 4 minutes, but a minute slower than my “revised” goal.  I finished 28/134 in my age group.  I have some training questions in my “post race thoughts” for anybody who is interested.

Background: In April 2011, I weighed 236 pounds and struggled to walk a 20 minute mile.  In April 2012, I weighed 155 pounds and was just finishing C25K, running about a 12:00 pace.  In April 2013, I weigh 130 pounds and just finished my first half marathon.

I started training for this race at the start of the year, following Pfitz’s HM Plan B in Road Racing for Serious runners.  In general, training went very well.  It was a challenging plan for me, and I had to adjust it a bit at the beginning because I couldn’t quite hit the miles he was calling for.  But I caught up with the plan about midway, peaking at 50 MPW like he called for.

My original goal was sub-2, but already by February I was hitting my training paces fairly easily and starting to think that goal was soft.  In March, I ran a 10 mile tune up race at what I thought was an aggressive pace (8:38), but ended up feeling great and having enough left in the tank to run the last two hard.  So I revised my goal to 1:55, but honestly wondered whether that was still a pretty soft goal for me.

However, my training in the last two weeks has been a bit off.  I’ll write more about that at the end.

Pre-race: Since the race didn’t start until 9:30, I had time to do a 1 mile shakeout run at 6:30.  I figured that way I could do a shorter warm up pre-race.  At 8:45, the runners from my local running club met for a group photo.  I’m in the purple.  And yes, that is a gorilla and a guy in a loincloth.

Then I ran another mile with some strides, ditched one layer, and went to line up.  The weather was about 44 and damp but not really raining.

Start: The start was really well organized.  They had pace signs along the side with enough room for everybody to fit at their anticipated pace.  I lined up at my best estimate of 8:45.  The plan was to go out at 8:45 for 2-3, then adjust from there (hopefully faster).  It was feeling pretty cold.  I thought my sock was bunched up around my toe, but when I went to fix it realized that my toe was just numb.  That was not an issue at all during the race, though.

I got off and found my pace without too much trouble.  We looped around campus a bit and even passed within a block of the house where my daughter was born.  I was feeling good, but even then was noticing that the pace wasn’t as easy as I felt like it should be for those miles.

Mile 1- 8:47

Mile 2- 8:48

Mile 3- 8:40

One nice thing about the course is that they have signs with friendly sayings at all the mile markers and in a few extra spots as well.  Here are some examples:

The next few miles were like old friends, because they are part of the running club’s winter route for the social run, and also part of my usual LR route.  We crossed back over OSU campus, through the covered bridge, and head out past the agriculture buildings and towards the hills west of town.  Luckily, the course takes the path *around* the hill, not over it!  We passed the artist that painted the signs along this part of the path.  She was walking around cheering for people.

I had been expecting to inch down into the 8:30s here, but honestly just was not feeling it.  So I figured even pace and even effort was a safer bet. I did sort of expect to warm up and fall into that pace eventually, but it never felt right like it did in my 10 miler.

Mile 4- 8:44

Mile 5- 8:53

Mile 6- 8:34

Mile 7- 8:36

The next mile was all uphill, but a very gradual slope.  It’s about a 2% grade for a mile and a quarter.  I decided to maintain effort and ignore my pace.

Mile 8- 9:07

I knew I had some downhill coming up and that the rest of the course was easy.  Finally things would start to click, I thought!  I saw my DH’s aunt and uncle out at the 9 mile marker.  Their grandson was running, but they had stayed out to cheer after he went by!  Later I realized he’s actually in the group photo, but I don’t know him very well, so I had no idea!

Instead of gradually picking things up and running it home, instead I started to fade.  I kept asking my legs for more, and they said, “NO!”  I don’t even think it was cardio as much as my legs just hurt.  The pavement just felt super hard and I was just working really hard to turn my legs over.  There was one steep little downhill block and I realized that I had to go very slowly down it because I felt like my quads would just lock up!

Mile 9- 8:41

Mile 10- 8:53

Mile 11- 9:00

At this mile marker, there was somebody calling out “you’re doing great, just 10 more miles to go!”  Funny!  Actually, one thing I haven’t mentioned is that crowd support the whole way was fantastic.  There were tons of aid stations, it was well marked, traffic was stopped, and several local runners who weren’t racing today came out to cheer!  That’s a really nice thing about a local race was all the familiar faces along the way!

Now the fade really started.  I had known pretty early on that I wasn’t going to run much under 1:55 today, but still had thought that I had 1:55 pretty much in the bag.  But I was watching that slip away from me and even knowing that, I just could not make my legs move one bit faster.  I will say that I was never tempted to stop or walk.  It wasn’t that kind of fade.

On the other hand, there was a woman who was running near me for most of the second half that spend most of her time grabbing her side and groaning.  Now that was dedication!  She clearly hurt more than I did, and I’m pretty sure she beat me, too!

We were headed back towards campus and I could see the stadium roof!  But it was still hard to imagine ever getting to the finish line.  For some reason I untied my jacket from my waist and then it was a real PITA to hold it with my water bottle in my hand.  WTF was I thinking?

Mile 12- 9:20
Mile 13- 9:22

We were coming in to the stadium!  The ramp down to the field was another one that I had to navigate really carefully to make sure that my legs didn’t lock up.  But then I got onto the field and right away saw my daughter cheering for me!  That cheered me up and I did my best to turn on a little bit of speed.  I felt like I had a bit of a kick, but I look like hell in the video DH shot of the finish!

Yes, I had a smile on my face.  I did my best to smile, wave, and thank the volunteers the whole way.  But look at how hunched my shoulders were.  No wonder I was tired if I was running like that the whole time!  Or maybe it was carrying that damn jacket.

Finish video is here.  You can hear DH and his mom laughing as the poor announcer tries to announce my name.

My pace for the last split was 8:06.  So clearly I had something left, but not much.  Final chip time was 1:56:00.

Obligatory swag photo:

I got my medal and some water, and went to say hi to my family.  I forgot to ask them to take a picture, though!  I was pretty out of sorts, actually.  Then I went up to the finishing area to have some tomato soup and bread.  Just about perfect for the weather!

I hung out and talked to a few people, but it started to rain, and I was getting very cold.  So instead I went out for a nice lunch and dessert with my family.

Post-race thoughts: All in all, I think that I ran the best race that I could today.  I ran it hard, and I did my best.  I also have to say that I am just thrilled that sub-2 gets to be my “starting” half marathon time.  Considering that my main goal last summer was to get a sub-30 5K, and that it took me several tries to get that, I feel very fortunate!

But I do sort of feel like if I would have run this race on the day of my 10 miler, that on that day I would have had a better time.  Since I really like the plan that I used in theory, I do want to take a look at what happened to see if there are any modifications I would want to make if I used it again.

Probably the biggest thing, though, is that I’m a beginner, since I’ve only been running for about a year.  Adapting to the stress of racing, especially at distance, probably takes time.  So next time I will go into it with this cycle already under my belt.

You can see in my log that my last “real” LR was back on March 27.  We had a trip planned for the end of March, so I shifted all of the quality work to the beginning of that week.  But that meant I ended up with back-to-back quality workouts of 14 miles, 7 miles with hills, an 8 mile progression, and 12 miles.

Honestly, my running has been “off” since then, so I’m thinking that last 12 miler was just too much.  Pfitz even says better to skip the quality workout altogether rather than try to cram too much into consecutive days, but I was being stubborn and thought I could handle it since my taper was coming up.

I also took some extra time off because my hip was bothering me last week.  The hip wasn’t a problem at all for me today.  But it just added to the fact that I hadn’t had a really good run at any sort of distance in far too long.  But I needed the time to recover from pushing just a little too hard in late March.

But this plan does hit peak miles a full month before race day!  Is that too far out?  Or not so much, since it maintains intensity?  I just felt like I peaked in March rather than in April.

The other thought is that maybe there was a mental aspect to racing a “goal” race, or to the HM distance in general.  In March, I didn’t have any real expectations at all.  I spent the whole time just about giddy that I could maintain that pace.  Today, I knew I could run that pace, it wasn’t exciting like it had been.  But it also just never felt fluid like it did before.  Does that make sense?

In any case, I’d welcome any training-related thoughts or feedback, for those of you who have hung in there this far!

You did awesome.. Sub 2:00 is not an easy feat... Enjoyed reading your RR..

Sub-2:00 your first time out is great!  You ran a really good race Mel, you should be proud.  I've told you this before, but I have to say it again, congrats on your awesome weight loss too!  To me that's an even bigger accomplishment than running a half marathon, but now you've done both!

Background: In April 2011, I weighed 236 pounds and struggled to walk a 20 minute mile.  In April 2012, I weighed 155 pounds and was just finishing C25K, running about a 12:00 pace.  In April 2013, I weigh 130 pounds and just finished my first half marathon.

Simply amazing!

I think you ran a wonderful debut. One of the crappy things about racing is you don't really know if it's going to be a good day or a bad day. Even if it wasn't a great day to race for you, your time was spectacular.

Congratulations on a fantastic debut half. I've ran 3 so far, and I haven't accomplished that. I am going to try in 2 weeks.

Great Job, Mel!  You will get that  1:55 next time for sure.

Congrats! I think you just had a bad day. It happens and it just means you have a really big PR waiting around the corner.