2010 Fall colours half marathon race report - my first half-marathon! (Read 349 times)

Race morning I was a bit nervous because of a large blister I had developed on the ball of my foot during the trail race had “come apart”... the skin was coming loose and revealing the fresh pink skin underneath... I took the scissors and removed the excess skin, and sprayed New Skin on it – worked wonders!

Got there, picked up my chip and met a girl from work I knew was running that race. We both wondered where the bag check was, if there was one... and after inquiring, there wasn't one. Which I think is dumb, especially for a fall race, where you'd like to keep warm until a few minutes before the start if possible.... but I had to go back to the car, leave my warm clothes there, and leave the key under the car, which is never ideal. Got over it and went in like for the port-o-johns... I was chatting with some folks in line, and we were realizing we would probably make it to the start just in time... which we did! Gun goes, everyone goes! This is not a large race, so I crossed the start line a few seconds after the gun. After about 250m, I realize my shoe was undone... way to go champ... went to the side of the road, tied my shoe and went back in. Then, I realized I forgot to set my Garmin to auto-lap every km... I fidgeted for a while and set it. Ok, everything is set now!

At the 1km marker, the watch beeped. Ok it worked! A little bit over 500m later, it rang... this is when I realized that the auto-lap was already set, and I had added an alarm every km, starting where I had entered it, which was about 550m in. I now had a beep every km and a ring every x.55km, which was actually ok.

Kilometers 0 to 6 were pretty uneventful, the pack was starting to stretch, which meant we had more room. That was not really a luxury, as only ¼ of the road was marked for runners and the roads were still open for traffic. The only interesting thing I noticed was Stereo-Man. I don't know if this guy took the “no headphones” rule literally and really wanted his tunes, but the guy had some sort of mp3 player (I'm guessing) with speakers. He passed me somewhere between kms 4-5, I passed him at the aid station at km 6, and he passed me after that. He had some kind of showtunes going. I was a bit annoyed at first, but I told myself I had no energy to waste being pissed at him, so I shrugged it off as odd and funny.

Around km 7 I started chatting with a guy about how the course was all uphill to that point, which we both laughed at a bit. I asked him if it was his first HM, which he seemed to find funny. He told me he had ran a few in the past few weeks, and had a few more lined up for the coming weeks... he also told me that he used to do triathlons, half-iron and Ironman distances... he also told me he did the Hawaii Ironman 3 times. He told me he was looking to do 1:45-1:50, and I told him that was my goal too. We were doing about 5:05 min/km, which I knew was about the right pace for that.

At km 12 he told me he'd slow down a bit, and to go ahead, so I did. I was still feeling pretty good at that point, but I was a bit afraid of how I would feel later on, given my minimal preparation... so I kept going. At km 16 I said ok, let's see what we can do... I started picking up the pace. It wasn't long before I started feeling it in my legs. I counted down the kms until we got back to the grounds where the start and finish were. Picked it up even more once we got there – we had to run around the field before making it to the finish line. I saw my mom, dad and aunt with my daughter cheering for me and sent kisses to my little girl. So I crossed the line, got my chip taken off by a volunteer, grabbed some water and a bagel, got my finishers medal, made it out of the chute and met with my family... only then did I remember to stop my watch, 1:46:02. Results were posted soon after and I saw I did 1:45:41.

Right up to the start, I thought I would have been happy with anything under 2 hours. I realize now that thing would have had to go pretty badly for me to run 2:00, even with this little preparation. Now I'm hoping to better that time and run a full marathon within the next year, but I will prepare better. I now know that I would be very disappointed if I did not achieve what I think I am capable of.