" First Half " Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

PRE RACE
I've been toying with the 1:30 barrier for a couple years now, or should I say the 1:30 barrier has been toying with me. It's a number that represents a pace I need to get fairly comfortable with if I ever intend to break 3 hours in a marathon. I have a current 1:30:39 PR from the 2008 First Half Marathon, then I ran the first half of the BMO Vancouver Marathon in 1:30:11 en route to a 3:10:10 finish. Had I known I was that close at the time, I might have kicked it up just for confidence's sake. Sometimes knowing what your capable of goes a long way in helping you raise your own bar. The 1:30:11 doesn't count as a PR in my books, portions of races are just that - portions of races. In the year's leading up to 2008, 1:30 was always a number I looked at and said "well... one day.".

I started training for the Ironman at the start of this year. Training for the Ironman is different than training for anything else I've ever encountered. We're no longer concerned with pace or distance, just time spent running. In fact if it wasn't for my plan to run the Boston Marathon in April, I would be doing all my running in an easy heart rate zone, and measuring my runs in hours, not kilometers. My coach has upped the frequency in which I run to 5 times per week, up from the usual 3 I was doing in 2008. He also has me doing lots of hill repeats. Leading up to this race he was fond of saying "you may be concerned with a half marathon in February, I'm not." Even still, I could feel myself getting stronger each week... and I've never been the type to not give it my all.

I went for a hard tempo run last Wednesday, and shut it down after about an hour. I just wanted to see where I was. Turns out I was about on track to hit 1:30, despite only doing 1 Threshold Workout in the past 2 months. Not the smartest idea to run so hard before a race, but sometimes confidence and taking away the unknown can trump accumulated fatigue... at least this has been the case in my experience.

My margins for hitting my 3 goals heading into the race were very slim: Gold - sub 1:30, Silver - sub 1:30:11, Bronze - sub 1:30:39. Anything else gets my one of those crappy Participaction medals. I knew all too well that if I hit any of those podium spots, it was going to hurt. A lot.

THE RACE
Sunny, cool and clear with very little wind. These are my ideal conditions! I met up with my friend Mike just like we did last year for a 2km easy run to the race start line. I noticed Vancouver Giants Head Coach Don Hay toeing the line... gotta love that!

The gun goes off and I'm only about 5 seconds off of gun time when I cross the start line. I set my Garmin to 1:28 and I was going to try and base my effort off where the little Virtual Partner was. My coach wanted me to hold back for the first third of the race but I found myself hitting a great stride right off the hop and I know it's foolish to not ride the wave when I'm feeling like this. The thought crossed my mind before the race to try and get the first 1.1k done in 4 minutes flat, then settle into 4:10s for as long as I could take it. I hit 3:48 for the first km, 3:43 for the second km. A little fast, but I had some time in the bank and I was feeling good.

Over the years I always see this one girl at every race who can run a 1:25 half marathon. We refer to each other as "Arch Nemesis". I can beat her in 5k and 9.5k, but anything longer and she destroys me. I ran about 8k with her today before she had enough and took off like the roadrunner. But we were well under 20 minutes at 5km and I recall I hit 10k under 41 minutes. There was a marker for halfway done, and I noted I was about 90 seconds ahead of shedule, if I wanted to crack 90 minutes... and I did.

The last third of the race is where I was supposed to pick it up, but it was really all I could do to stay the course. The few hills in this race start hitting you with about 6 km to go. With 4 km to go, Sportsnet Pacific personality Scott Rintoul passes me. I try to hang with him for a while, but he's one of these "experienced" distance runners who actually paces himself properly.

I feel like I am really dogging it down the last 6 km, and it's pissing me off. To make matters worse my sub 1:30 cushion is really small now, and I know there's a substantial hill standing in my way that could make things interesting. I drop the pace, increase the cadence and power up the hill, now it's do or die. Pack it in, and maybe settle for bronze. Man up for 4 minutes of extreme pain, and the last 85 minutes will have been worthwhile. I choose the later. I kick into 3:15/km pace and hit the finish mat in 1:29:06.

FINALLY.