2013 March Madness Half Marathon

I came into this race not sure what to expect, but I was guessing it was either going to go really well and surprise me or really bad.  I was wrong, it went pretty much right down the middle, I didn’t have a bad race but I also didn’t have a good race.

Overall, my race went fine.  I held a pretty steady pace the entire race and only faded a little bit in the last half mile.  My heart rate slowly climbed the entire race and I finished running hard and with nothing left in the tank.  I definitely did not blow up, and didn’t make any pacing mistakes.  I just went slower than usual and couldn’t speed up.

The only thing I think I could have done better was to get some more running outside in prior to the race.  With my work schedule and me getting older and softer, I have trouble getting out to run in the dark when it is below freezing out.  My last real run outside was at Ironman Arizona on Nov 18^th.  Since then I reviewed all my workouts and I did a total of 1 hour of running outside (two easy runs).  I don’t know if this affected my race, but my legs sure are trashed today (Monday after the race).

I’ve done this race 4 of the last 5 years and ran (oldest to most recent):

• ·         1:17:5x
• ·         1:17:4x
• ·         1:18:1x
• ·         1:19:38

The thing I’m most bothered by is that the overall I’m getting slower instead of faster (and the conditions we best this year when I went the slowest).  I will say that over the same time I am getting faster and better at long course ironman racing. 

Maybe I can’t have it all, but I’m going to keep trying to get my run back to where it was about 2 years ago while still holding on to the gains I’ve made on the swim and bike.  So it’s time for a few months of focusing on the run and another half marathon.

The best part about doing this race is that I’m fired up again, and I’ve found that I am the most motivated when I am disappointed in myself and feel like I should have done better.