Well, I decided to throw another race in this year. I was running well and since I hadn't broken 90 minutes in a half marathon yet this year, I thought it would be a good time to try. I didn't taper for this race, in fact I ran a 13.1 mile training run the week before in 1:30:02 and finished this race week with 35 run miles.
I went out too hard and threw a couple of surges in early to catch the leading pack, which was a big mistake that I paid for later in the race. I looked at my watch at about a half mile into the race and my pace was 6:03. It was great weather, but there was a headwind which I fought solo, then a tail wind coming back which allowed for a nice negative split. My heart rate monitor was messed up miles 4-8 and 11-12. I figure I was in the high 150s, low 160s the entire race. I dropped my car key at about mile 8.5 and stopped for 20 seconds, which cost me a top ten finish (I finished 12th overall) and made me 3rd master (over 40) instead of 2nd. There were only about 400 people in the race. It was very flat and only about a mile of it was paved - mostly gravel and dirt.
So what did I learn? Need to practice more surges, then back to pace during training. Don't go out too hard in mile one - settle into a nice pace and rhythm early. Taking a gel with caffeine 5 mins before is not a bad idea, but might have gotten me excited during the first mile. A nice 1.5 mile warmup run before the race helped a lot keep the HR down.
I'll need to do a lot of sub 5:40 mile repeats in training and 6:00 pace tempo runs if I want to make a serious dent in my half marathon time. (Going into this race, my mile repeats were 6:00 pace and my tempos were 6:20-6:30). My long runs with 10 miles at 6:50-6:40 pace were really good training for this race, but would want to see that 6:30-6:20 if I want to see low 80s in a half marathon in the future.
Love run at the end of March is my next half - 4 months to train. Looking to nail that one if I can stay healthy.
I went out too hard and threw a couple of surges in early to catch the leading pack, which was a big mistake that I paid for later in the race. I looked at my watch at about a half mile into the race and my pace was 6:03. It was great weather, but there was a headwind which I fought solo, then a tail wind coming back which allowed for a nice negative split. My heart rate monitor was messed up miles 4-8 and 11-12. I figure I was in the high 150s, low 160s the entire race. I dropped my car key at about mile 8.5 and stopped for 20 seconds, which cost me a top ten finish (I finished 12th overall) and made me 3rd master (over 40) instead of 2nd. There were only about 400 people in the race. It was very flat and only about a mile of it was paved - mostly gravel and dirt.
So what did I learn? Need to practice more surges, then back to pace during training. Don't go out too hard in mile one - settle into a nice pace and rhythm early. Taking a gel with caffeine 5 mins before is not a bad idea, but might have gotten me excited during the first mile. A nice 1.5 mile warmup run before the race helped a lot keep the HR down.
I'll need to do a lot of sub 5:40 mile repeats in training and 6:00 pace tempo runs if I want to make a serious dent in my half marathon time. (Going into this race, my mile repeats were 6:00 pace and my tempos were 6:20-6:30). My long runs with 10 miles at 6:50-6:40 pace were really good training for this race, but would want to see that 6:30-6:20 if I want to see low 80s in a half marathon in the future.
Love run at the end of March is my next half - 4 months to train. Looking to nail that one if I can stay healthy.
Split
|
Time
|
Distance
|
Avg Pace
|
Avg HR
|
1
|
06:25.9
|
1
|
6:26
|
137
|
2
|
06:37.4
|
1
|
6:37
|
159
|
3
|
06:39.4
|
1
|
6:39
|
159
|
4
|
06:38.0
|
1
|
6:38
|
102
|
5
|
06:44.5
|
1
|
6:44
|
88
|
6
|
06:42.6
|
1
|
6:43
|
53
|
7
|
06:39.9
|
1
|
6:40
|
53
|
8
|
06:32.7
|
1
|
6:33
|
155
|
9
|
06:37.8
|
1
|
6:38
|
157
|
10
|
06:21.0
|
1
|
6:21
|
156
|
11
|
06:31.2
|
1
|
6:31
|
121
|
12
|
06:38.0
|
1
|
6:38
|
126
|
13
|
06:26.8
|
1
|
6:27
|
162
|
14
|
00:58.3
|
0.16
|
5:54
|
158
|
Summary
|
1:26:33
|
13.16
|
6:34
|
125
|
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