Monday, September 19, 2011

Philadelphia Half Marathon

September 18, 2011  8am

The following is an excerpt from my training log:


Weather:  Perfect Temp… mild winds up to 13-14mph.    Got a great warmup in:  walked a mile at 6:15 am so Monica could get some coffee, got back to hotel, ran 2.5 miles easy on treadmill from 8:00 - 7:30 pace, did a couple of light strides, stretched, jogged to start line with some more strides.   Perfect warmup.  Felt great.

Race
splits:
mile 1    4:58       felt relaxed, but fast... tons of people ahead and behind, easy to draft, easy to move around
mile 2    5:05       settled in… let the massive group get away
mile 3    5:09       trying to find rhythm… running solo or maybe with 1 other guy, running good lines
mile 4    5:06       top ladies caught up… got in a better groove
mile 5    5:04       hanging with ladies (+10 other guys!)
mile 6    5:11       fell away from group (quads began tying up.. flooding with lactate…way early)
mile 7    5:12       slowly melted off off group
mile 8    5:16.5   struggling
mile 9    5:25       really struggled, although there was a slight uphill before two 90 degree turns and a bridge
mile 10  5:15       downhill mile, started to feel better
mile 11  5:10       got in a good groove, trying to embrace “the suck”, which it did
mile 12  5:15       still fighting
mile 13  5:24.5    got my ass kicked… legs ran out of juice.  heart rate too high; not my day.
last .1      :35    

gun time 1:08:13   chip time 1:08:11

today was a 7 out of 10.   I wanted to run a full 90 seconds faster, but i’m proud of the way i continued to fight.  heart was funny, maybe some arrhythmia around the 8-10 mile marks of race.. would have been interesting to see a monitor (but i hate wearing those during races)   felt OK on warmdown.  Another thing that strikes me is in training during tempo runs, my first mile is always my slowest.   I think running that first mile fast is fine, but I think I'd be more ready for it if I practiced the same way. 


I still feel really good about my upcoming run in Chicago.  Truth be told, I haven’t felt great since Lost Lake.  Lost Lake is the sort of race that can take it out of you:  seeing as how i hammered the last 3 miles of the downhill there so hard, there’s probably a correlation between SORE QUADS during the race and how they felt today.  Katie(my massage therapist) remarked how stiff and inflexible they were on Tuesday.   I came into this race on the heels of 87 miles over the last 8 days, so although I was more rested than usual, I was really knackered from the week before.  A week ago I felt really lousy at the end of my 22 mile run, so all things considered, I might even say I ran well.   I can't help but think of Ryan Hall running a 1:03:53 at the NYC Half 4 weeks before running a 2:04:58 leading up to the 2011 Boston Marathon.    This was not the race I am training for:   Chicago is.   I can't wait.

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