Notes
PR on a cold and flat course around Port Royal. Finally, a decent race!
I had real concerns about this race because my legs had never seemed to recover from the 80 mile relay followed by the Ft Myers full followed by the Weston half in about 7 weeks last fall and they were still dead on Wednesday plus my left knee swelled up for some unknown reason. After two days of no running and frequent soakings in the 55 degree pool, I was hoping for a decent effort.
Devin and her teammate, Sidnee, were going to run together so we met the Russos on 41 and we all went to the office to get ready. I gave Sidnee and Devin throw away shirts and we jogged a bit before the start. Pretty big crowd, 2000+ runners. At the gun, Sid and Devin took off a bit and I hooked up with fellow jar head Tulio in front of the office. We ran together for a mile then I ran with Kim E for a bit and then I was running with a bunch of strangers. The first two miles were pretty close to 15 flat, 7:30 pace. I caught Dev and Sid just before the Port Royal turn and headed back giving shouts to Cindy, Tommy and Kim on the way back. This course is like 3 fingers of a hand so I started picking it up heading back up the first finger and down the second. Same routine except that I also gave a shout to Sid and Dev and Sid's mom and her oldest. At the top of this finger we passed the halfway point at 47:24, some quick math and I knew I was looking at a PR sub 1:35. I was running with a guy my age who said he had been clocking steady 7:15s the whole way so I stuck to him and we ran together for the next finger and back onto Gordon where he opened up a decent gap on me. The last 3 miles were tough but I dropped (or tried to drop) the pace for the last two and came in pretty psyched with about 1:30 PR from last year's Marco half. Sid had fallen back from Devin so Devin had been running sub 7 trying to catch me ever since but she ran out of room and came in 20 seconds back.
The conditions for this race were near perfect, so I was happy with the PR but I can't help but think I could have been closer to 1:30 with some better legs.