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Comments: Started mid pack-ish with my son and daughter, took less than a minute to cross the actual starting line, hit the button on my Garmin and we are off! My son stays with me as I start with a 8:15/mile pace, my daughter says "see you later Dad" and falls back right away. I'm skeptical of her tactic as we are RACING and been talking sh*t to each other for a few weeks now. I'm trying to hold back on my pace as I've never ran this far and have been warned about running on the adrenaline early and then crashing. Mile 2 is an 8:07! crap I need to slow down. My goal is sub 2 hours which is about a 9 min/mile avg, I find myself constantly doing the math....at least it kept my mind occupied for a bit. I settle into about an 8:30/mile pace and hold that thru mile 9!! the amazing part is I kept seeing ppl pass me CONSTANTLY and was able to look down and see that I wasn't slowing down. This was a key element as when being passed I had the urge to speed up. I had to keep reminding myself to stick to my race plan! At mile 4 I notice my garmin beep at me telling me another mile is in the books, the bad thing is I haven't reached the mile 4 marker yet....and there it is at 4.15 miles...ugh, this is going to bug me for the rest of the race! As I'm peeking down at my times and feeling people still passing me I look up to see what looks like my daughter, she's quite a bit in front now, too far to confirm (i see the phone thing on the arm, same color shorts and top) ugh, no way I can keep up :( At mile 6 i hear folks mentioning that their Garmin distance is the same as mile, off by a little over a tenth of a mile. Me and an older gentleman start chatting. The small talk gets me through about a mile and a half and i don't even remember it, wow, so awesome to have someone to talk to. He recently has surgery that fused 3 vertebrae in his neck!! anyway I asked what he thought his finish time would be and he said between 1:38 and 1:43. I immediately think to myself "holy crap, I'm going too fast!" I look at my watch, nope still good holding 8:42/mile pace. I can feel him starting to fade and he says "i'm going to take a break" and fades back. On to the great highway, which is an out and back, I can see the elite runners coming down the home stretch, i'm starting to wish I was already there.... The turn around is around mile 10, as I hit mile 9 (or 9.15 according to MY Garmin) i start to watch diligently the runners coming the other way to see if that was my daughter who passed me. Whilst looking over I hadn't noticed the terrible road I was running on. No huge pot holes but enough cracks and pits that I should've been watching where I was going, this is made clear as I step in one and roll my foot a bit and nearly go down! From then on I am only peeking over every now and then to try and spot her. I can feel the race starting to wear on me and my pace is slowly fading. Mile 9 was an 8:43 and mile 10 was 8:52. I make the turn around, i say to myself "only a 5k left!" it doesn't seem to help. at about 10.5 miles I see my son coming the other way, he's doing great! only about a mile behind me. At mile 11 as I have given up looking for my daughter I hear "Hey Dad!" from the other side, she is only at mile 9....victory is mine! Mile 11 seemed to take forever, as did 12....I was running out of gas. I tell myself to just try to stay under 10min/mile....mile 12 was a 9:43. the final mile was slightly easier tho not much, the final hill at the finish forced me to walk for the first time, my legs felt like jelly, thank goodness the end was near! I picked it back up to be actually running at the finish, I saw 90% of the people near me sprinting into the gate, I just didn't have that in me....I looked up to see the clock reading 1:57 and change and I knew I was home! I raised my arm as I finish making sure my finisher photo isn't of me stopping my garmin. I am now exhausted and elated at the same time, my outward appearance probably looked like I was about to keel over, but inside I was beaming! What would you do differently?: allow for more that 5 weeks to train! My first time at this distance so pleased overall but can do better!  Post race
Warm down: I immediately see my wife and friends waiting and they are semi-shocked to see me first (they knew the competition my daughter and I were having), hugs to the wife and I keep walking down to get some water and let the legs rest a bit. What limited your ability to perform faster: Lack of training time. Event comments: the volunteers were great, I thanked every one of them that I came in contact with...even the bus driver :) Last updated: 2012-01-21 12:00 AM
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United States
Sunny
Overall Rank = 2248/4998
Age Group = 45-49
Age Group Rank = 192/307
As this is my first ever half, i practiced prerace the week before running a 10 miler (my longest distance to date). Got up at 4 am, had coffee, granola bar, race gear was prepared the night before so walked around waking everyone else up (My wife and a few of her friends were doing the 5k, My son and daughter were 'racing' me in the half). Left the house at 5:23 (8 minutes late!) got to the great highway parking around 6:30 which was about perfect, grabbed the shuttle. We were the first ones on this bus so we sat in front and as we start to pull away the bus driver asks where we are going...omfg! A lady comes on and barks out directions to the start, I make sure i'm paying attention and its a good thing as the driver didnt know which way to turn a few times, so everyone on the bus can thank me later for getting us there :)
Arrived safely and on time, didnt need sweat check as the weather was awesome and my wife was nice enough to carry my windbreaker I was wearing to the start. Group stretch as we waited for the all clear to start the race, I felt pretty good.