Skidaway Island Half Marathon
April 4, 2014
Savannah, Georgia

This is a week late, but better late than never. This is also a prelude to Robert’s Epic FE thread. Early in the year, I had wanted this to be a PR attempt because I knew the course would be flat. As life has it sometimes, I was derailed with my training to reach this goal. I also have another goal for the end of April that is unrelated to this event, yet has plenty to do with running, more about that later.

On the weekend of March 28, I run a 25k trail race that beat me up a little. I knew this was not a super smart thing to do if I was to shoot for a PR on this half, plus, training sucked. I also did an 11 mile run just 2 days after the 25k; this also was not smart to help the PR attempt, but was important to the upcoming event at the end of April.

So, since everything had gotten derailed, and I knew a PR wasn’t in the cards, I thought I would just run at tempo pace and see if I could hold  on. I was perfectly on target through 8 miles, then faded and struggled just to keep moving to the end. My splits are terrible, which I really don’t care about. What I did care about, is that I didn’t walk, except for the last water stop around mile 11. Just after the fade started in mile 9, I kept thinking about the end of April event coming up, and knew that I was going to feel this same way, so I had a pretty good mental thing going on to test me. The course was beautiful and very flat, so I'll attempt another PR next year, as long as I don't do the 25k the week before, haha. Since I like cold weather much better than warmer, I'll add that the heat was very tough for me. It was 65 degrees at the start with a strong breeze that actually made it feel cool, and maybe 75 when I finished.

Here’s the splits for the split keepers
Miles 1-8 are 8:47, 8:53, 8:53, 8:54, 9:00, 8:49, 8:59, 9:07
The fade….miles 9-13.1 are 9:24, 9:39, 9:44, 9:40, 10:04, and the last .1 was at 8:42 pace

My finish time ended at 2:01:25, which was good for 8/16 AG, and 97/373 OA. I will say that this was my 15th half which includes the two 25k’s. Most of my times HM times are just over the 2 hour mark, so I wasn’t really disappointed.

On April 24-26, I will be running an event called, The Grand Viduta 3 Day Stage Race. This is the end of a series of trail races, that upon finishing, you get an award for being a “Trail Boss”. I’m not sure what the exact award is, but you definitely will have earned some bragging rights. It will be run on the trails of Monte Sano Mountain outside of Huntsville, Alabama. Friday is 13 miles, Saturday is 16 miles, and Sunday is 14 miles, for a total of 43 miles.

Thanks for reading. I want to give a very special shout out to our dear friends, Robert, Angie, and TJ. Thank you for the hospitality, we love ya’ll.

Here’s a bunch of pictures to go along with the one’s Robert posted.

TJ will always be my hero!!!!

Great pictures.  Looks like a good race, overall.  Flat is nice.  Next year will be even better, if you don't overdo it beforehand.

Congrats on the race Mitch.

That second pic is running magazine cover material. Wow!

It was our pleasure having y'all stay with us!  That was a great weekend for sure.

Sometimes having fun and FEs are more important than PRs. Looks like you had a great time and enjoyed the day.

Those pictures are incredible.  It looks like a beautiful event and thanks for sharing your FE with us.

Great pics.  Congratulations!

Great FE too!

Nice report Mitch! You have some really nice pics there bro. TJ has the right idea on how to gobble up those Peeps too.

You and Rob have formed an inseparable bond. It is one of the reasons I maintain a presence on the forums because if everyone left, those bonds would have never happened.

Great stuff!