Notes
Splits say it all. This was supposed to be a marathon pace run, not a race. My average pace turned out fine, but it would have been much better if I had actually run that pace throughout. Instead, I started (downhill the first 1.5 miles) in the low 7:40's, which felt really slow and easy. So I gradually let the time creep faster, always because it felt great and I didn't seem to be pushing it. I figured I could back off if it did start getting hard. But I didn't: it started getting hard when we went up a big hill (the Wilson bridge) in mile 9. I stayed almost on pace up the hill, which was pushing it. I should have slowed down. Instead, I coasted down the other side, starting to recover, when there was another hill that did me in - again in part because I held my pace up it too. I didn't really recover after that. At around 11.5 miles, my average pace was 7:34. But that's where I lost it. I got discouraged when I saw yet another hill ahead, my legs just locked up, and I walked for a couple minutes (in mile 12). When I started running again, it was very slowly until I made it over that hill and started descending. But the last half mile or so of the course was on gravel and sand, which my wasted legs did not like at all. Just before the end I had to stop and walk again to avoid puking in front of all the spectators. I managed to "run" across the finish line but forgot to stop my watch immediately, but I changed my time when I got the official results. Lesson #1: it was dumb to try running such a long race fast when I haven't been training for it, no matter how I felt. Stick to the plan: run marathon pace runs at marathon pace. Lesson #2: forget about running MCM faster than 8:00/mile. Stick to the plan there too: the consequences of going out too fast in a marathon will be worse than today. Lesson #3: running faster in the future is going to require more speedwork. Surprise! Training has to be race-specific, and to race faster you need to train faster. I have been training to run 26.2 miles at 8:00/mile pace. That training is paying off. But it's not going to make me a better half-marathon runner. So there's no point in trying to do a training run so fast, as if I'm going to set a PR. More likely, I'm just going to get discouraged and perhaps injured, and the rest of my training will suffer. Even if I do set a PR, that would be lucky and risky. Stick to the plan. If you want to set a PR at 13.1, then race a half sometime when you've trained specifically for that and are not training for something else. Otherwise, perhaps I'm best off doing marathon pace runs on my own instead of signing up for an organized race that I'm not supposed to race. (Note: my time at 10 miles was 1:16:21).