Kansas City Half-Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

I lined up at the starting line between the 1:35 and 1:40 pace groups. I thought landing a time somewhere within this time range would be doable assuming my knee/IT Band and shin problems did not bother me as they had on my long training runs. Of course if I had to walk I could throw any goal time out the window.

I began the race relatively conservatively, at least in my mind, almost to the point where I thought I was going to slow for what I was capable of. As a result my breathing and heart rate were at good levels. At mile three I encountered the first challenging hill at the Liberty Memorial, one of two or three climbs of the day that seemed to last forever. The entire way up the hill I was very paranoid of whether or not this would be the stretch of the run where I would begin to start feeling pain in my knee. I knew it was a matter of when, not if, it was going to hurt.

The stretch from mile 4-6 is when I began to feel the knee. I said many a short prayers during this race hoping that I would be able to make through the race without having to walk. I also knew, based on my training runs, that if I did start walking it would be much more painful to start running again. Through the middle part of this race I began craving any sort of flat stretch of road. No uphills or downhills needed to put any stress on my knee. Despite all of this my pace was still good even though there was some occasional gimpy running to take pressure off my knee.

Midway through the mile 7 mark the half-marathoners separated from the marathon course and I soon found myself running by myself. It was very lonely running from here on out the 12 mile marker. Just a few runners dotted along the course and not much out there in terms of crowd support. This in hindsight might have been a good thing as I was able to zone out and just run. It wasn't until I had a 5k left that I realized my knee was hardly hurting anymore (or at least I had become numb to the pain). And even though my feet hurt the most I thought I still had enough in the tank to start picking up the pace for a strong finish. As I approached the finish line I picked up some steam and I was able to pick off a few people that had been ahead of me the whole way. In fact one girl I had passed moments ago was surging behind me and was about to pass me, but I sprinted it to the finish line to beat her. Girl or no girl I didn't want anybody passing me now.

I shouldn't have been so preoccupied with what my knee was going to do/was doing. I think this mentally held me back for 3/4ths of the race. Just go out and race my hardest; what happens, happens. In hindsight, I think I could've gone faster than the time I got.

I finished and felt pretty light-headed once I stopped. My legs and knee tightened up considerably once I began walking. I'm glad I made the call not to walk during the race.

I downed a bottle of water (I didn't take advantage of even one aid station! - felt no need to grab any water or Gatorade along the way). Then grabbed some food and went on a long, slow, and staggering walk to find my wife/ride home/keeper of the warm clothes.


ITB/Knee pain. Mental focus.


Good race overall. The start was slightly delayed, but I think it was because they were waiting on one of the wheelchair participants to get situated.
This event is continuing to grow. It went from 8,000 overall participants last year to 10,000 this year. Great volunteers. Well organized. I would like to see greater community involvement/awareness of this event. As I mentioned earlier, it got lonely out there in the far corners of the race course. Of course, I was at the Chicago marathon last week so perhaps my perspective is a little skewed.