Month: March 2012

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Shamrock’n Half Marathon – Year Seven

Div PlacePlaceTimePace
63/274 560/537301:48:10 8:15 min/mi
People I Passed: 3,210
People Who Passed Me: 16

The Race

Let me start with the differences between this year and last. Last year, I started training about a week ahead of time, with just a couple of small runs. This year, I’d run a half marathon the week before! Last year, I ran alone. This year, I ran the first 12 miles with Harry. Last year, I expected to do horribly. This year…. I still expected that, though hopefully better than last year. Last year, I ran my third-to-worst time for a half. This year, I was right in the middle of my results.

I’ve blogged before about the route, so I don’t need to cover that, other than confirming that I do like it. The one thing I can talk about in this blog is the difference in jogging with Harry through the first twelve miles. Harry had definitely out-trained me… as usual for the last few years. However, since we had been running together for the prior month, we were in a good position to run together for the first part of the race. It’s not unusual for us to run the first several miles together, or one of my best races had us running 11 miles together, then splitting for a final push. This time, we ran our longest distance together in any race; twelve miles.

We had a very solid start, and kept it up well. We were almost late to the start, so were some of the last ones to cross the start line, and thus we made good time, and passed a lot of people as we kept a steady pace. The advantage to running together is that, when one of you starts to flag in energy, the other can keep you going, and Harry definitely did this in the first half of the race. By the second half of the race, our roles were reversed. I don’t think Harry has really pushed himself at the end of the race with the mentality of “I only need to push for this much further…” So at the half way point, I’m talking about us being half way there. At mile 10, it’s about having only 3 miles to go, and visualizing the quick warm-up runs we do to see how little there is left to go. At mile twelve, Harry didn’t have anything left to continue winning the mental game, and I took off. Little did he know that, if he had stayed with me (and probably could have!), he’d have gotten a PR. But he stayed strong, and so did I, and we both came in with good times for us.

It was a great run and race, and my most social half marathon ever. I really look forward to doing one like this again!

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TBF Racing – Lost Trail Half Marathon

Div Place Place Time Pace
2/6 24/93 02:01:32 9:16 min/mi

My Second Place Win

Other than the small USAA 5k race, I’ve never podiumed on a race before. Did I deserve to get there? No, not really. My age group was one of the worst represented at the race, but do I care? Not at the moment. I enjoyed my moment on the stand, I love the plaque, and I’d be grateful to make it up on a podium again! Had I been female, my time would have gotten me 4th place. Had I been 40-49, eighth place, 50-59, seventh place. 30-39… second place!

The Course, or the Ever-Improving-Mark-Shaw

I have to take a moment to speak on this race versus my last TBF trail half marathon. The first time that TBF did a half on the Granite Beach trails, I think the race was short about a quarter to a half mile. I look at the resulting times between the two races, and the statistics point to the very same belief; the average time was about ten minutes faster, and the number of people in the 1:30s was astoundingly high. Now take this race: my GPS still shows it short, but it’s also not very accurate, the times seem appropriate, and the GPS versus the stated distance were well within the accuracy bounds. I think Mark has done a great job improving the course, both for accuracy, and for having a pretty even lobe on the south side of the beach (about half the race) and the north side. So Mark Shaw, well done sir.

My Mental See-Saw

So now to how the race went for me. I’m still under-trained, and so I struggled more with this race than I should have. But I also learned a few things about myself and my racing that I think I should put down in my blog. First of all, thinking you’re right behind someone can be a great motivation to speed up! At about mile eight, I was told that I was within spitting distance of Bill. I know he’s in much better shape than I am, and he blew away my time last year at Shamrock’n, so the idea of catching up with him was very appealing. I felt I had enough left in me, so I picked up my pace by about a minute per mile, and flew by several of my competitors. It felt great! Unfortunately, the speed-up did not leave enough in me for the hill that was at mile ten, so I lost my momentum there, and didn’t really gain it back. Oh well, “A” for effort!

Most of my time in the back half of the race was a struggle between two conflicting mindsets. One told me that I just needed to relax, let gravity do most of the work, and make my way to the end. The other was the drive to push myself faster to keep under two hours. I’ve never done a half in more than two hours, so when I reached mile eight, with five to go, and realized that I was an hour and a quarter into the race, I knew I had to get down below nine minute miles consistently (including hills) in order to do the last five in 45 minutes. So off I went, and I learned something. Gluts are great for climbing hills!

In the past, I’ve always used my hips and quads to lift my legs when ascending. However, as they were pretty beat down by that point, I discovered that instead of pulling my legs up with my quads, I could push my legs up with my gluts. This whole new muscle set really allowed me to go for the last half of the race, and brought me a new found set of muscles that I could interchange with others for extra speed. w00t!

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it in under two, so I was quite a bit disappointed in what I did. But when I saw some runners that I highly respect, and know are better than me, come in behind me, and then when I got to stand on the podium, I was no longer quite as disappointed in my time. I still finished in the top third of the race (25.8%), and with the “trail penalty,” would still have what I would consider a respectable time, I just wish I hadn’t broken the two hour mark. Oh well, next time!