Mercedes Half-Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

This was my first shot at a race of this length. I struggled through mile 1 - then again 7:10 was too fast (woops). I throttled back after seeing the mile 1 time. Settled in at 7:35 or so for the next few miles and felt reasonably good. At mile 5 the grade turned up somewhat and my times slowed a bit. Legs really started burning and never really felt all that great for the rest of the race. At mile 6-8 the road really turned up. Pretty happy with staying under 8:00 miles here. Miles 9 and 10 bounced around with another decent size hill.

Mile 10 was mercifully downhill for the most part, though I was starting to tire pretty bad and started to slow down. At mile 11 I hit a wall. Pretty much the same wall that I have hit in training more than a couple times. Mile 11 was brutal and I was ready to be wheeled off the course. Once I hit mile 12 and knew the end was close I managed to speed up somewhat. Not much - my calves and hamstrings were screaming. Mile 12 had a couple devilish little rises that make the ending hurt pretty good. Sprinted in the last bit.

In every other run I've done I have been able to bring it home strong. Not today. I faded pretty good down the stretch. 1:40 (my goal) was in sight and I faded right out of that. Next year, I guess. Still, this is quite a hilly course. On a flat course I would have hit sub 1:40 pretty readily.

Interestingly, despite the added hills (total of 1100 vertical feet of climbing) I clocked in a 7:43 pace on this 13.1 - pretty much the same as the 10 miler a few weeks ago (7:42 pace) on a much flatter course. The effort was there, just sadly not during the last few miles when I needed the strength to bring it in with style and crack 1:40.

Overall I can't be too upset with this. In the last year I've dropped 45 lbs. and only bee running for ~8 months (from scratch). In that light, this is a reasonable performance. But still, couldn't I have found 4 bloody seconds somewhere on the course?

Splits:

Mile 1: 7:10
Mile 2: 7:33
Mile 3: 7:34
Mile 4: 7:32
Mile 5: 7:50
Mile 6: 7:47
Mile 7: 7:56
Mile 8: 7:59
Mile 9: 7:40
Mile 10: 7:48
Mile 11: 7:49
Mile 12: 8:05
Mile 13: 7:48
Last .1: 0:33

1st Half: 49:41
2nd Half: 51:22

Maybe take some nutrition at mile 6 or so to help with the mile 11 bonk.

Died at the finish line. Got my medal and finisher's shirt.


Lack of long runs. I could have been significantly faster given more training - particularly longer runs and long tempo type runs.

Lose some weight. I should have been racing at 167 or so and started the race at 173. The weight was a product of being under the weather and not training much last week.




From mile 3 on the mile markers were off pretty bad. They had my 10k time at 45:20. Hah! I wish.