Notes
I went into this race with less than ideal training; aside from one interval session last week, I've only done slow rebuilding miles since my marathon 6 weeks ago and I exceeded 30 mpw only twice prior to this race. I was just hoping that I still had some residual marathon fitness to snag an easy PR.
My goal going into this was 1:28, or at least sub-1:30 if the hills turned out to be too much of a challenge. The weather was great at the start. It was a little cloudy and about 10 degrees Celcius. I'm too lazy to look up the conversion so just trust me that is a good race temperature for me.
I started out kind of slow for me as I don't think I got an adequate warmup. There were no markers until the 4km mark, unless I missed the first 3. I guess they don't care as much for us measly halfers. It may have been a better thing for me though, as I didn't stress about pace and just slowly got into a groove.
I can't remember exactly what my time was at 10k, but at that point I realized that 1:30 would be difficult. There was a pretty nice sized hill at 11k, and then a really big one at 12k which climbed 200ft over 1k and then dropped back down the same amount over another 1k. My legs will likely hurt tomorrow from that descent.
I actually felt pretty good after coming down from that hill, and finished the last 5k in just under 21 minutes! I don't have the official time yet, but I recorded 1:30:52 on my watch and my chip time won't be far off.
I learned a few things today. I didn't push myself hard enough as it felt way too comfortable for more than half of the race. I know I'll re-learn to push myself into that discomfort zone in the coming months as I will be doing shorter races more frequently over the summer. I also learned that I was delusional to think that I could run a 1:28 today, even if the course was completely flat. However, I do think high 1:29s was definitely possible and I really blew it. Most importantly, although I realize that not every race can be a PR, I felt the feeling of not PRing, and I'm glad I got it over with now, while I'm not really in shape for anything. Today was the first time since I got serious about training and racing that I did not PR.
Thanks for reading. It's time for a shower, nap and then some playoff hockey and later.