Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

The first few miles were VERY crowded - I'd seeded myself to finish in 1:50 and the folks in front of me were no-where close to holding that pace. After the first half mile I was almost a minute down on my target pace. During the second and third miles I caught up a lot of it by running right at the edge but I was still doing a lot of weaving.

By the time we got past the climb out of Rock Creek Park I was feeling pretty tired, a lot of folks around me were suffering too. fortunately, the course drops mostly downhill from there, and I was able to catch up a good chunk of what I lost through Rock Creek park. The crowds were a little thinner, although I was still doing a lot of jumping between folks and it was hard to find a rhythm. At this point I switched from the Virtual partner to instant pace and tried to keep the number below 8:00 for the rest of the race so I was making up time.

After the water stop at mile 11 I was wasted and running on will power. The last mile or so (following the marathon split-off) was downhill, so I took advantage of that and pushed as hard as I could. Once we could see the stadium I was running with whatever I had left - crossed the line and immediately had to lean on the fence.

Paced perfectly and hit my target right on the nose - aimed for 1:45 and hit 1:45 EXACTLY. Maybe have tried to seed myself further towards the front by asking for a higher coral so I wasn't weaving through people. With 30,000 odd people, I don't think that's possible, but the weaving and surging takes it out of you pretty quickly.

Took advantage of the BUFFET at the finish line. Got all sorts of goodies.


Excellent race that went of seamlessly. They made everything SO easy. The only issue we had was packet pick-up closing at 7 on Friday, along with the DC traffic - we made it with less than 30 minutes to spare.