So here we are, seven weeks into the new year, and I'm running a half marathon. I haven't run a race since mid-October of last year. In fact, between that race and December 31st, I hadn't run a step--gave myself an 11-week hiatus as a physical and mental break. (Not that I was completely sedentary during my hiatus: every day I would either ride my bike, go for a swim, do some yoga, or lift weights. Just no running.) But I've been running consistently since January 1, and training for this race since January 10. A good number of my friends and teammates from both Runner's Edge and Runner's Roost are doing this race as well. My goal for the race was to keep it under 2 hours, and I felt pretty confident that I'd be able to do so. After all, four of my last five half marathon races were under 2 hours. So a sub-two finish was, to me, more or less a foregone conclusion. Pride, as they say, goeth before the fall.
I started the race with a classic rookie mistake: going out too fast. I was caught up in the excitement of the moment: the energy from the other runners combined with my eagerness at running my first race in four months. My first mile was 8:32. It didn't feel like I was racing, though. I knew I was running fast, but I felt like I had my speed under control. Still, I told myself I'd reign it in, because I still had 12.1 to go. This I completely failed to do. My second mile was 8:13. Part of that I blame on my music. I'd spent the past few weeks uploading some new tunes to my iPod; turns out they're quite effective for inspiring me to move fast.
I did manage to slow myself down for the next few miles, keeping my average pace closer to 9 minutes. I was still feeling pretty comfortable, too. Then, on mile 6, I hit the first appreciable climb on the course. As I pulled my way up the hill, I was assisted by Joey Ramone's punkish cover of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." The course then turned into the Blunn Reservoir, and a brief downhill provided a nice respite after the half mile long hill. Until I looked up, that is.
As the course turned north and crossed over a small bridge, I looked to see what lay ahead. To my annoyance and shock, I saw runners traversing up a steep incline with plenty of switchbacks. This, then, was the big climb. For a brief moment I was very discouraged. There was no way, I told myself, I'd be able to get up that hill at my current pace (8:56). But I tried to banish those negative thoughts quickly.
Just past the start of the climb was an aid station. I took advantage of this to give myself a short walk break as I drank some water, and called up my mental reserves to push myself up the hill. I glanced behind me and saw a friend, whom I had left behind at the very start of the race, about 50 meters behind me. Just then "You're Going Down" by Sick Puppies started playing. I'm not ashamed to admit that I used the lyrics of the song (about a guy beating another guy in a fight) to push myself up the hill, determined not to let my friend catch up to me. Then, after Sick Puppies, I heard the great jazz trumpeter Al Hirt's version of the Green Hornet theme. This high-energy piece gave my legs new energy, and I sped up my footstrike to keep time with the music until I crested the top of the hill.
Mile 8 was my slowest mile--it took me just uner 10 minutes to make that climb! Fortunately, what goes up tends to have to come down, and mile 9 was just what I needed: a steep, speedy downhill that let me more than make up the lost time. In fact, mile 9 was one of my fastest miles. But then I started to slow down. I was running out of energy, and the miles seemed long to me. Even my standard "Only 5k left! Anyone can run a 5k!" motivational outcry did little to help me run faster. I finished mile 10 and glanced at my watch: I'd been running for an hour and a half. I knew that I could afford to slow down to just faster than 10-minute miles and still meet my goal of a sub-2 hour race. Actually I took a great deal of comfort from that realization, because I was getting tired. But as I ran through mile 11, and felt myself slowing down, I realized I'd have to fight to hang on for every second. I didn't look at my watch, because I didn't want to see what I was sure was happening: my time goal slipping away.
Then I heard Metallica. Regular readers will know that Metallica is sometimes a secret weapon with me: All Nightmare Long and Master of Puppets have gotten me through some quick miles in some earlier races. The song I heard now wasn't 8 minutes long, but the driving beat would, I thought, still help me push my pace. I was wrong. I couldn't get myself to run any faster, even when a second Metallica song miraculously played after the first. (My iPod is on shuffle, but somehow it has a knack for knowing what I need to hear, when I need to hear it.)
With what I estimated to be somewhere between a half mile and a quarter mile left in the race, I risked a glance at my Garmin. My time had just turned over 1 hour 55 minutes, so I had less than 5 minutes to get to the finish line. My spirits, which had been sagging at that point, suddenly lifted. I couldn't make myself run any faster, I believed, but suddenly I was no longer dead tired. I saw the finish line clock climbing inexorably towards 1:58:30 and pushed as hard as I could, crossing the finish line in 1:58:34.
In retrospect, I don't know that I deserved to finish under 2 hours as I did (even though it was a bit of a squeaker). I started out way too fast and did not adequately prepare myself for that giganimous hill in the middle. But, as I observed later, if the course had been flatter, I probably would have been able to set a new PR.
Official Time:1:58:34
YTD Race Miles: 13.1
YTD Total Miles: 176
Not Even Close: The fastest time in my division was 1:17:05. I came in 20th out of 37.
