Notes
Charleston (Marathon) Half Marathon, 2nd place overall, 21sec PR. Had some ambitious goals going into this one:
☆ goal - PR (sub 1:15:40)
☆☆ goal - OFBOC goatlist (sub 1:15:15)
☆☆☆ goal - sub 1:15
☆☆☆☆ PERFECT DAY goal - 1:14:14/5:40 pace.
I really should be COMPLETELY happy about it... I took down one of my proudest PRs and got my best purdy road performance ever. And yet, it's hard not to get a little critical of your race when you were just a few seconds away from another ☆, but as the old saying goes, one ☆ is better than none. Without that big headwind, I do think it could have been a three-☆ day but there's not much sense dwelling on that; if the race was yesterday I probably would have no wind but it would have been over 70, so you just gotta take what you get!
But all in all, I know it was a great day! I woke up tired but not fatigued like the last couple days, and by the time I got to the race and mingled a bit, I was getting confident again. It was very windy out and with the course being largely one direction I was hoping we'd luck out and majority tailwind race... alas. Oh well! Pacing was fine considering. The goal was to start with 5:45s and then bring down the average to as close to 5:40 as possible, but with the good headwind from 4 onwards, I could never really comfortably get the pace down. Wind was worst in the 8-10 range (clearly, looking at those splits) when I was REALLY ready/trying to get moving more so that was particularly frustrating. Yeah officially it was a slower second half but I'm not paying much attention to that.
From the gun I was only behind 2 guys but that wasn't too surprising; my previous PR would have placed me between 2nd and 5th all 7 years of the race. One of those two was the eventual HM winner and the other was actually the marathon leader but I didn't realize that until after the race. I had a little back-and-forth with the marathon leader from miles 3 to 5, finally moving away for good on 6. A separate guy went past us on 3 and grew a gap, but I ended up pulling even with him around 7, running with him for about a mile, then easing away. From that point on it was lonely but that's more company than my last HM at least! Always cool to be able to say I got 2nd but wouldn't have minded more help.
I'm sure I could have PRed in the marathon today but I definitely don't regret switching distances. The HM course still has those pretty barren middle few miles but at least it's a direct course without a bunch of ridiculous (and easily missed, apparently) out-and-backs. It was nice to kind of get a little redemption from 2 years ago in a way.
I think the 2016 CR Bridge Run might still edge out this race but it's no worse than my #2 best road performance... pretty cool since I certainly wasn't considering myself in GOAT post-collegiate shape (though I was shooting for a GOAT PC time?? :paulconfused:). Was hoping to break through a bit more but I gotta feel good about where I'm at.