Race Day

It was a great day to run my first 1/2 marathon this morning. Temps were in the low 60's with little wind. I stayed up a bit late last night so I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked and I had a slight headache to start the morning. Nothing 6 Advil couldn't handle. Chad and I got there around 7:00am and warmed up a bit as well as finding Joe. I started training for this with a goal of beating 10 minutes a mile. Early last week Joe mentioned that he would be happy getting a time under 2 hours. I mulled that over and decided to shoot for the same goal. My best practice time was 2hrs 15min, just over 10 minutes miles so trying for under two hours was going to be a stretch. I normally don't run with a watch but I decided to today so I could tell how I was doing mile to mile.

I had a 10 minute mile to start and I was pretty upset by that, but by the end of the race I was running at a clip of approximately 8 minute miles. I was surprised at how strong I got towards the end. I've always faded in practice but running in the crowd gave me a boost of energy. Another big boost was getting water every mile. I've never run with water before so after today I'm going to change that.

The race was pretty cool, there were garage bands about every two miles playing music of all different types. The crowd was pretty thin in areas but I wouldn't' know better since I've never run a race before. Chad said that in the Twin Cities it's wall to wall fans through out the race. After today I'll definitely run a lot of 1/2 marathons. As far as a full marathon goes, well I might give it a shot someday but for now I'll stick to the 1/2's.

I ended up getting in under 2 hours with a 1:57:44 time. I thought that was pretty good but I guess for my age group I got in just under the 50 percentile. Next time I'll shoot for the top 40th.
Chad finished with a 1:48:23 time - full details here
Joe finished with a 1:47:49 time, just barely beating Chad - full details here

My results:
Place Overall: 2415 out of 8787
Men: 1778 out of 3985
M 30-34: 261 out of 587
AgeGrade: 49.70% Place: 4111
FINISH: 1:57:44 pace: 8:59
5k: 29:13 pace: 9:25
10K: 57:00 pace: 9:11
10Mile: 1:31:00 pace: 9:06

Hayley and I after the race.


Chad, Joe and I