The short summary is that I finished in 1:58:58 for a 9:04 pace. This is a little over a minute slower than my PR but 4 minutes faster than my Detroit half in Oct. I was 3902/20285 OA and 46/249 in my AG (60-64). This is the first time I've finished in the top 20% in a race. The best I've done before is about the top third. It's also, by far, the largest race I've been in. In fact, my AG had more runners than most of my races have had in the total field. The flight out on Friday evening went off as scheduled. On Saturday, daughter Sandy and I drove from my brother in laws in Scottsdale to downtown Phoenix to meet brother Dave (selb3) for lunch and go to the expo for package pickups. Dave was there as a coach for Team in Training. At the expo, we met up with mc. We had a nice chat. It's nice to put a face with another of our cyber group. mc is as nice as he is fast. Saturday, we got to the parking and starting area without any problem. It was a nice day for a race, the temperature was probably in the mid 50s for the start of the half and about 65 when we finished. Sandy and I watched the wheelers start the marathon and went to our respective corrals for the half. The half and full had separate, point to point, courses with their start and finish lines close to each other. The wave start by corrals was the smoothest that I have experienced in any of the larger races I've been in. I did not feel crowded at all and was able to immediately start at the pace I wanted. Sandy reported the same for her corral. Other than finish, my main goal was to match or beat my Detroit time of 2:02:58. My second goal was to break 2 hours. I couldn't help but think about my PR of 1:57:46 as a third goal. My ancient GPS will only display one item of information other than time. Usually, I select distance but this time I selected average pace since there would be mile markers and I could estimate distance from pace and time. A few hundred yards after starting, I looked down to see a pace of 8:40. I immediately backed off a bit with the goal of keeping it closer to 9:00 knowing that, since I'd be doing a bit of weaving and not hitting tangents that I'd cover a little extra distance and therefore the pace would be more than what my GPS said. I got into a zone and just plodded along without seeing much other than the pavement about 15 feet in front of me and the runners near me. I was aware of, and encouraged by, many of the bands and cheer groups. I was able to keep the GPS average pace between about 8:55 and 9:00 most of the time. When it would read 9:00 I would try to push just a bit harder. I saw most of the mile markers and hit the splits button. I missed a few but knew from the time that I had just passed them so got splits for approximate miles that way. At the start, the 2 hour pace group was in my corral and I sort of tucked in behind them. Sometimes I was as much as 50 yards back and sometimes I was even with the pacer. In the early and middle part of the race, I wondered if I could pull ahead of them without overexerting myself but it didn't feel like I should follow through on the idea. Then, somewhere around mile 10, I realized they weren't in front of me any more. As I got into miles 10 and 11, I felt that I had 2 hours in the bag as long as I didn't have anything go wrong and it didn't. Even though there were a lot of people in the finish area, getting water, finisher's medal, and chip removed went smoothly due to good organization. Leaving the finish area, I saw my wife, Ann, brother in law, Al, and sister in law Donna handing out food at one of the tables. Not too much later, Sandy finished and was happy with her race. She said she felt worse during the race than at Detroit but recovered more quickly after finishing. During the race, Dave had called Sandy. He ran about 14 miles of the full with one of his team then went cross country for about half a mile to catch the half course about mile 8. At that time Sandy was at about mile 10. Even though Dave's fast, he wasn't going to catch her before the end. Sandy ended up 7491/20285 OA and 371/1133 in her AG (18-24). Dave finished the half course encouraging some of his runners, ran back several miles on the full course to cheer on some more there, then ran in with one of his team. He estimated he got in about 30 miles for the day. Checking my GPS later, I got paces for the approximate miles of 8:53, 8:51, 8:53, 8:59, 9:09, 9:06, 9:07, 8:53, 8:55, 9:06, 8:50, 8:56, and 8:55. We ended the race related part of our trip by having breakfast with Dave on Monday. The rest of our visit with Al and Donna was a lot of fun. Between the race, the nice AZ weather, and the visiting, it was a great trip. TomS

Nice race, Tselbs! Sounds like a well-run event and always neat how you run with family. (Dave sure put in the miles, wow!) Thanks for the write up and congratulations on the sub-2!!

Great race, Tom, and way to run that consistent pace. But you make it sound so easy, I should think that you have an easy PR on the horizon if you pick another flat-n-fast course. Maybe later this year? By the way, there's a new HM this year right in my back yard (almost literally): The Brooksie Way on Oct. 5. Unfortunately, I wouldn't call it a PR course since there are some notable elevation changes. But it would be less crowded and easier to get to than Detroit. They've even got a deal to register for the Crim and the HM both for $75.

yeah tom! nice pacing, great time, fantastic finish position! i'm glad that you and sandy had such a good time with the race and the logistics... lots can go wrong in these huge events, but i think they pulled off another successful one this year. it was great to chat for a while at the expo. hope we cross paths again. and pass along a "way to go" to dave for me... that's a nice day's mileage... and it's fantastic that he helped his runners so much and so unselfishly! come back next year.

Sounds like you had a great weekend. My first full was with PF Chang's with TNT. Loved the weather and course. Hope to see your brother at a TNT event again.

mc is as nice as he is fast.

Tom, Wait a minute. Someone else just posted, "mc is as nice in person as he is here." So which is it? Hey, nice run. You beat my Seattle time by 21 minutes. But you weren't carrying someone else's personal gear including jacket, spike heels, makeup kit, gels, snacks, car keys, sunglasses, tissues, and what-have-you. Dark Horse

Tom, I'm with Doug. You make it sound so easy! congratulations on your sub-2. Was this the race you were a little hesitant about at first? I'm so happy it all worked out so well. congratulaions to Sandy & Dave too.

Great Job Tselbs very even pace. Staying with a plan is sometimes difficult but you nailed it pretty good. Now back to reality and colder weather