OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

Almost perfect morning to run. Little chilly for about the first mile. I hit lap on the Garmin, instead of letting it do auto lap every mile. My goal was to finish with average miles of <8:00/mile.
Mile 1 (1.04miles/8:16) - Just going with the flow. Crowded as expected, but being in the upper corrals sure helped. No walkers or really slow starters. Not as bad of a mile as I had feared.
Mile 2 (1mile/7:45) - Made up for the first mile to bring average back to 8:00. Started to thin out enough to set your own pace. Really enjoyed having the Garmin set to show current pace. There were enough straight aways for it to be effective.
Mile 3 (1mile/7:46) - Nothing special just running at comfortable pace.
Mile 4 (1mile/7:49) - Good mile for me considering I made a pit stop at the porta potty
Mile 5 (1mile/7:54) - Headed to track.
Mile 6 (1mile/7:53) - Into the speedway.
Mile 7 (1.01mile/8:08) - Just kinda running with the crowd around the track. Slight mental lapse. Somewhere in here I had the bright idea of trying to drink some water from the cup while still running. As usual when I try this, I almost drowned.
Mile 8 (1mile/7:54) - Watched a very aggressive female runner with headphones run over and trip another woman and hardly even help her up. I saw the bricks this time :) I was at mile 7.7 when I watched the winner cross the finish line on the JumboTron at the track.
Mile 9 (1.01mile/7:51) - Headed out of speedway. Felt good to be headed back. Legs felt good.
Mile 10 (1.02mile/7:51) - I took the last hit of my gel flask and threw it away.
Mile 11 (1mile/7:42) - I had read where a lot of people think this is the longest mile of the race. I just concentrated on getting through it and set up a good 2 mile finish.
Mile 12 (1.01mile/7:50) - Started to pick it up and felt good for the first 1/2 of this mile. Then about 11.5, my left lower back tightened up suddenly. I slowed a little to try to get it loose. The pain then worked it's way up and around to my left oblique.
Mile 13+.1 (1.12mile/9:06) - The pain continued for this almost this entire mile. I became "that guy" who was making noise. Every time I would take a breath, my breath would catch before I could blow it out and caused me to make noises. I'm sure people thought I was going to hurl. I really felt like I slowed alot, but my time was not too bad. The pain eased and I ran loose again about the last .25 mile.

Really good run for me. Almost perfect 11.5 miles. I really feel that I was set up for a very strong last 2 miles until the back pain came. I had plenty of legs left, but just couldn't breathe right. I may have pulled a muscle the other day. I felt it a little while stretching on Friday, but thought it was not a big deal.

Need to thank my family as well. They are incredibly supportive and patient with me, it is very much appreciated. I know I can get "grumpy" the night before a race and for a short period of time after a race.

Not have pain or trouble breathing. Training works and I hit my goal.
I forgot to take the Garmin off of auto pause. I lost signal and the time must have stopped while running under the track into the speedway. This caused me to think I was :20 ahead of where I was, which would have put me under 1:44, which was a goal.

Walked (or was herded) through the finishers chute. Did a little walking around before finding the family and watching some finishers and finding teammates, including my dad (aa9my) who completed his first 1/2 marathon. I'm so proud for him. Did quite a bit of walking looking for a "lost" teammate. He turned up about an hour or 2 later at the vehicles. Drove home.


Really good race until the pain and breathing problems showed up. Ran what I expected. I PR'd this course and my old PR by 16 minutes!!! No complaints.

I did alot of running to prepare for this race and it was nice to see results. The last 2 weeks, my 5k times at the end of tri's have not been what I wanted, but today verified that all the run training was not all for nothing.


Incredible organization for this many runners. I enjoyed this race once again.