Notes
Madison Mini Marathon!
Registered! And raced! Very, very hot, potentially the hottest race that I've run? And I'm pretty okay with this - sub 1:25 was 100% not in the cards with this heat. I maybe could have run 1:26:30 with a bit more caution at the start, but I'm not convinced I had that much focus and push for the race.
Official splits:
Split: Time in split; position of split
Start - 2MI: 12:28.93; 4th (technical issue where any times under 12 minutes were not counted)
2MI - 5MI: 19:24.74; 5th (technical issue again)
5MI - 10MI: 33:56.85; 15th (looks more filled out)
10MI - Finish: 21:26.84; 14th (looks reasonable-ish)
Looking through the rest of the splits on the website, I think I see one or two steady races from people in the top 50 and a whole lot of splits that look like mine where the first one is fast and the last one is dragging.
Unsorted Notes:
1) I was not a huge fan of the organization of the race this year - they weren't as communicative and the website was out of date.
2) Running up Observatory at mile 12 of the half marathon is awful and I hate it. That said, I still had reasonable drive on that hill, so I wasn't as completely tanked as some of the other people in the race.
3) The start diagram was not how the start was set up - the words didn't actually match the diagram, which is confusing. That said, I do like having the start line under the pedestrian bridge.
4) Fueling was okay for this race, if a tiny bit light on water at the very beginning - I could have had a little more water before starting and definitely needed more after the race was over. Outside of water, I had a pop-tart for breakfast and that works very well for what I need.
5) As you can tell from the splits, I was definitely struggling with the back half of this race. One part of the problem was that I was kind of out on a island by mile 4-6; the next group up was a tiny bit too quick, but also not getting away quickly. But I was also realizing that the time just wasn't there, so there was a bit of motivation thrown away - I was having some trouble really focusing in on running hard with also needing to think about the course.
6) The water stops were not as well-staffed this year, sadly - I think they ended up dropping three in total, but that included two of the first four. With conditions, that was not ideal.
On reflection, this is kind of a weird race - I wasn't hyper-focused on it, but I also had it on the calendar as something that I wanted to run because I do really like this race. Sadly, I think the falling attendance and date changes are kind of emphasizing the faults with this race - namely, a summer half in Madison is a risky weather option especially if you can't stay in the Arb as much. I'm glad to have run it though - Wayne, Laura, Cody, and Maria all ran it as well, so it's lovely to have that grouping. And yes, Maria was third in her age group again (she's now done that three times in a row at this race, and I think it's the fifth or sixth time that she's been third overall or in her age group).