Topeka to Auburn Half-Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

OK, so the agree upon pace for this "fun" run was 8:15/mile. Of course I'm running with Patrick who averaged 7 minute miles in his last Half and John who ran a Marathon in October. Both were much more prepared for this run than I. My longest run over the last 3 months was 7.3 miles, had 28 total run miles in November, 51 in December.

So the race starts we're cruising along at what felt like a 7:30 page so at about 1/3 of a mile into it I say "Hey guys, this feels like about a 7:30 pace". Jon says "I don't think so, I've got us around 8:20" as he looks at his watch. So we hold pace and at mile one my Garmin shows 7:33. I look at the guys and they say nothing! So we get to mile 2 and we're running low 15 ish so start to hang back a little to see if they let up. Nope, not gonna happen. At about mile 3 or so a gal next to me asks what the time is, she stated her watch wasn't working. So I say we're at 23 minutes and change at 3.02 miles and shouted out to my so called friends in front of me "A LITTLE FASTER THAN THE AGREED UPON TIME". I got a friendly look, and a chuckle from those two as they continue to widen the gap between us.

For the rest of the race I just ran my pace and maybe looked at the Garmin twice, once at mile 6, saw that we were at 47 minutes and change and then at mile 8, time was around one hour two minutes, something like that. Because I didn't make a race of it this turned out to be a really good training run. I was able to smile with a thumbs up for the photographer at the top of the infamous Urish hill.

I picked up the pace a little with about a 1/2 mile to go just to have a stong finish.

The course was actually long because of a funeral near the finish. A last minute change put the distance between 13.3 and 13.4 miles. So my actual pace based on the course being 13.35 miles was around 8:03 min per mile.

Not take my gloves off at the finish. I couldn't feel my fingertips after that.

We wandered around looking for the pickup location for our finishers sweatshirts. A nice shade of purple, really well liked by KU alumni. En route to getting our sweatshirts stopped by the car to get warm clothes on. It was now about 1:00 so we then headed to Patricks house for a quick shower, then off to a swim meet at 3:00, yeah, our day was not over.


Nothing.


Overall a pretty well organized race. There wasn't a lot of restroom facilities (Porta Potties etc) as we were at the mall. But I was well aware of these things beforehand. I could hear some chatter about it but I seem to remember reading about the limited facilities somewhere. They had a pancake breakfast/awards ceremony but we had to leave early.