I'm late getting this posted, but better late than never. There are some pics at the end, some are gross, and some are really neat. And if you read it all the way to the end, I have a couple questions and would like your opinion. I run this race in honor of my FIL who has Kidney Cancer.

CANCER SUCKS!!!!!

The Short Story

Sept 12, 2015
Time: 1:51:55 (last year was 2:07:05)
O/A Place: 93/1221
A/G Place: 8/51
Gender Place: 71/444

The Longer Version

Training
I am in the middle of training for the Detroit Marathon on Oct 18th, so I wanted to race this half to help me dial in a goal pace for the full. I decided on the Hal Higdon Intermediate II for my marathon plan, but opted to insert a lot of the workouts from the Ryan Hall 10 week HM plan for the first part which would carry me into the half. I did a few of the repeat intervals, but dropped a lot of those type workouts, and focused more on the longer tempo runs. My weekly average for the past 7 weeks was 38 miles.

Here are some key runs over the 7 weeks prior to race day;
Sept 3, run 9 miles at 8:47 pace
Sept 29, run 18.4 miles at 9:26 pace
Aug 14, run 9 miles at 9:44 pace
Aug 15, run 21.2 miles at 10:02
Aug 21, run 18.8 miles at 11:24 -lots of walking, tummy aches with too many PM calls
Aug 26, run 10 miles at 8:38-after this run, I decided goal HM pace would be 8:25

So, with all this….I decided to start out with the 1:50 pacer. I asked him prior to the race how he “planned” to make the 1:50, and in return, he asked what my goal was, and told him 1:53. I had put a lot of thought into setting my goals for this race, and I came up with an A goal of sub 1:50, a B goal was PR of sub 1:51:33, and the C goal of 1:53.

Race
 This was a destination trip that was about 5 hours away from home. It’s a point to point race just outside the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge TN near the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Our anniversary is on the 23rd, so we were able to stay for 5 days and get in some shopping, sight seeing, relaxing, and racing. We booked a small one bedroom cabin that was about 45 minutes from the race. My wife and I got up at 3:45 to make the trip to the finish line. Buses would start to shuttle us at 5:20 to the start line. My wife took a pillow and blanket, and crashed in the back seat of the truck and waited for me.

The staging area was a large parking lot of a high school. There was a DJ, packet pickup, door prize drawings, and plenty of port-a-pots. I met up with 4 friends for a few pics, and some small talk. I got my morning business taken care of, and then headed out for my warmup where I planned for 1.5-2.0 miles.

During my warmup, I headed out onto the road where the race would start, and planned to go out about 3/4 mile and turnaround. There was no shoulder on this very narrow country road, so I was trying to stay as close to the white line as possible. On one of my steps on the line, the pavement was missing, I rolled my ankle, and busted my ass on the asphalt. JUST EFFING GREAT! Now my foot is hurting, my elbow is bleeding and I have a softball size spot of road rash on my thigh. I managed to “walk off” the ankle, somewhat stop the bleeding, and managed a 1.6 mile warm up.

I had a decent sized fruit protein shake for breakfast along with a couple of doughnuts, and had a Powerbar and a Gatorade on the drive over, then had another 16 oz water before the race started. I carried a handheld with a Cliff electrolyte supplement you mix with the water. I did plenty of hydrating the previous 2 days, so felt like the one 22 oz bottle with a few calories would be enough. I passed on all the aid stations, and did not take any type of GU.

Miles 1-5 were 8:29, 8:34, 8:28, 8:21, 8:25
I stayed right with the pack of runners that were tagging along with the 1:50 pacer through all 5 of these miles, I was even out in front of them at times.

Miles 6-10 were 8:28, 8:41, 8:25, 8:32, 8:33
The pacer was slowly pulling away from me during all of this, but I never lost sight of him. Prior to the race, he told me that he planned to start a little conservative, and then “ease” into it. Which after it was all said and done, I think he was pushing a faster pace towards the end, and this is where he lost everyone in his group.

Miles 11-13 were 8:47, 9:01, 8:58. The last .1 was 7:30
The last 1.5-2 miles was a long, straightaway greenway path, and I could see the pacer up ahead, he was by himself. I started feeling very hungry and was getting tired at mile 10.5, but knew I didn’t have much longer. It was during this time, that I had some doubts on why I didn't take in any GU. I struggled to hold pace and was ready for this sumbitch to be over with! I managed to pass quite a few people during the last 2-3 miles, included several that started with our pace group. As I was coming into the finish chute, I spotted my wife and she grabbed a couple pics. I’m glad she woke up in time, she later said it was some of the best sleep she has gotten in days. Her phone pics turned out better than the race photographers too.

My finish time was 1:51:55. Damn the luck, I should have dug a little deeper to beat that PR. Overall, I am completely satisfied with this race except one part. And that’s where I busted my ass. Here is a pic of my foot a couple of days later; I couldn’t walk the next day, so stayed on the couch with ice on my ankle. I ended up going to the doctor when I got home, and had an x-ray done. The doctor confirmed it was not broken and just sprained. He advised me to take some rest, which I have done. It’s been 2 weeks and I have finally managed a couple of short easy runs.

Post Race
Where do I begin? First off…we had a great weekend retreat, I had a great race(except for getting banged up), we scored some good buys while shopping, managed to get lots of rest, managed to sleep in(past 8:00am) except race morning, and overall had a great trip. I’m getting too old to be busting my ass like that! It hurts way too much, and takes entirely too long to heal. So, I will “TRY” to be more careful!

The following 2 weeks have been near zeros on running, so I’m wondering what Detroit holds for me. Does anyone have experience with sprained ankles? How long were you down/cutback?

If you have managed to read this far, I’d like your opinion for Detroit. McMillan calculator claims I can run 26.2 in 3:55 based on the 1:51 for this HM. But if you plug in…say a 2:02, which is a better average for “most” of my 14 HM’s, it claims a 4:16 is possible. So here’s my tentative goal, assuming I don’t get completely derailed with my ankle over the next 18 days. My goal is to go out with the 4:15 pace group(using the LR paces from above as reference), and if I fade to 4:20, or even 4:30, I’m a happy camper!
Is going out at 4:15 too unrealistic? Should I start a bit more conservative? Or maybe start with the 4:10 pace group?

The area we were staying in was having a Rod Run Weekend, so we managed to see some nice old cars, Here are a few pics.

We scored some shoes, $65 for the Mizuno, $25 for the New Balance!!

Thanks for reading!

Mitch

Congrats on even being able to run on that ankle, much less that fast. I don't think the missing GU was significant, but that gradual slope up could be insidious. As far as sprained ankles, I've never sprained mine so badly that I couldn't at least run easily after a day off and I was fine within a week or so, but I've also seen sprains that were so bad they needed crutches and even had to wait a few days for swelling to go down before they could take x-rays to see if there was a break as well.

Dude, Mitch. You ran a good time on THAT??  Damn, you are tough.

I can't believe you ran such a fantastic time on a sprained ankle!  Nice work.

I'm with onemile - 4:15-4:30 seems conservative.  Assuming your ankle feels ok, why not go out with the 4:15 group expecting to speed up instead of expecting to fade?

Holy cow!  20 seconds off of a PR with a rolled ankle.  That's impressive!  Nice job sticking with your plan after the worst warmup ever.

Awesome job.  Looks like the race is a very nice one.  Congrats!

Can't believe you ran on that ankle.  Now mine hurts !!!  Congrats and good luck in Detroit.

Amazing that you ran that well on a sprained ankle. And I would imagine the thigh & elbow weren't feeling too great once you got warm & sweaty.