4/12/2008 Capitol City Half Marathon Columbus, OH (Read 536 times)

This race was preparation for the Green Bay Marathon that I am doing in May. The goal was to run 7:15 mile pace. A good friend was running the race with me and I was staying at my best friend’s house just outside of Columbus. The weather was 45 degrees, windy and overcast. I ran in shorts, running jacket and a ball cap. The start of the race was the normal thing. My friend and I positioned ourselves near the head of the 7:00 pace section. We still had to do a good bit of weaving in and out of people for the first quarter mile, but that is to be expected with a field size over 3,000. Our goal was to run at a 7:15 mile pace. Which we did for the first 3 miles. Gamin told me so and my friend was using his watch for splits at the mile markers. It was really comfortable and I felt like we were going too slow, but I did not want to run faster because 13.1 miles is a long way and a lot can happen. We were talking and laughing for this part of the race. Around mile 4 we started to get passed by a group of runners. Which was very odd to me. It seemed like everyone was passing us. I looked at my Garmin and my friend at his watch and our pace had actually increased making it stranger. We still felt comfortable and decided to still try and maintain a 7:15 pace. Though, I found that we were consistently running around a 7:05 pace for the next 5 miles. My friend was really excided because he was originally hoping to run 7:30 pace but at the last minute decided to try and stay with me. This would turn out to be a very good decision on his part. The course up to this point had been mostly flat with small rolling hills and there was really good breeze. All in all I thought that it was a very nice day to be running. Around mile 9 I finally started feeling the effort of the race so far. The 7:05 pace was getting a little uncomfortable and there was a little voice in the back of my mind saying that this was too fast and that I should slow down. But it was little and my friend still looked really comfortable, so ignored it. Around mile 10 I could no longer chat with my friend. He still talked but not as much as before. At this point the voice in my head was getting a lot louder and a decided to listen to it. There was a woman in front of us that we were gaining on. I decided that once I got up to here that I would slow down for a few feet. That never happened. Once I got up to her I decided she was running to slow. I looked ahead and pick another target. At Mile 12 with only two mile to go both my friend and I picked up the pace. At one point in time I looked down and the average pace for that laps was a 6:45. I did not tell my friend. He asked me if we sped up and I said yes, but did not let him no by how much. He looked really strong and I did not want to scare him. Me on the other hand was feeling the effort but with only this little bit to go I knew that I could do it and that even if I died I would still be faster then my original 7:15 goal pace. The final little bit of the race there was an uphill. This is where my friend left me and the voice in my head finally had one little victory. The wind was blowing in my face and the hill was kicking my but. My friend slowly moved ahead and by the time I got to the top of the hill he had at least 6 seconds ahead of me. I really started to push it on the down hill just focusing on my friends back. The finish line came into view and I went all out. My friend ended up beating me by two seconds. Though I was able to hold off everyone behind me and no one passed me going up the hill. The last two miles were done in a 6:50 pace. When it was all said and done I had run a 1:33:06 chip time. I am very happy with the results. The 7:08 mile pace was well below my goal of 7:15 pace. I even think that if we had run more even split we could have gone a little faster. The course was really nice and we ran through neighborhoods with beautiful houses. The course was a great tour of Columbus. We even ran around the OSU stadium, which was cool. It is one of the largest stadiums in the country. The croweds were not big but i think this was beacuase of the weather. It looked like it was going to rain the whole race but it never did. There were people cheering us on the whole race. There even was one woman we saw multiple times. She was on a bike and must have been racing to diffrent parts of the course. Here is a link to a course map . http://www.runningahead.com/logs/d50cdc34094646ebb73e6976e06aab02/courses/8b701d878408460482785e0db6d7920d Here is a link to the races home page. http://www.columbusdistanceclassic.com/ Small Complaints: The first thing, once my friend and I arrived into town, was to pick up our race packets. The packet pick up was at the Hotel next to the convention center. When we arrived their around 5 PM and their was a man standing at the front of the room telling you were to go to get your chip and bib number. The packet pickup was done by number and they had nice little signs behind each person saying what boxes of numbers were for what. Unfortunately, those signs at this time of day did not match up with what the voluntaries. Which made it a little confusing and take longer then it should have. After picking up the packets we were directed across the room to get our T-shirts and goodie bags. This meant that we had to wade through the vendors that occupied the middle of the room. This off course annoyed me. Once we received our T-shirts we then had to wade through vendors again to get to the place they were handing out things for the goodie bags. I really did not like the layout. I am not sure what everyone else preference is but I like the assembly line approach to packet pick up. Where all stations are directly next to each other and there is an obvious flow of traffic moving in a logical order. The second small complaint; All the runs that I have done to date the goody bag was the gear check bag. Which I thought was the norm. Even on the website they said the goody bags would be used for the gear check. Unfortunately the goody bag on this occasion was a brown paper bag not good for gear checking. So I assumed that they would have bags for us at the gear check, this was a correct assumption. It would have been nice to know that we could use our own bags for the gear check. I would have packed cloths and shoes to change into. Since, I was unsure of the size and type of bag they were providing I just brought the minimum of stuff that I needed. The third and last complaint was that the only sign for the gear check was inside where the gear check was located. Which was cool, if you read the website and remembered what it said. I had read the website but I skimmed over the location because I foolishly thought that they would have signs directing us to the gear check. The volunteer we ask for directions to the gear check was very nice and we were able to find the gear check. Though we did waste 10 minutes trying to find it on our own.

Nice job, OJ!! I guess I wasn't paying attention, I didn't know you were coming to town this weekend. Sounds like you had a pretty good time, expo aside. Good luck in your marathon in May. I'll be waiting to hear about it.

Nice job OJ. I was about 6 and 1/2 minutes behind you, which was faster than I anticipated also. This was my first half and I didn't know exactly what to expect. How did this course compare to others you've run?

I have only run one half marathon before. That was the Rock and Roll half Marathon in VA beach. I like the Columbus course better. The VA beach had a whole loop that to me seem to be out in the middle of nowhere. The entire Columbus course is through the downtown, OSU campus and really nice city neighborhoods. Though, with all the Rock and Roll half marathons they have bands playing all along the course. Which is cool, but without those bands the course would be bad.