Love Run Philadelphia Half Marathon - Run

After training with Chris Draper for the last six weeks, I came into this very confident and fit, despite the short training window. I started out at a comfortable pace, though my body wanted to go fast out of the gate and I had to keep stopping myself from matching paces with the people around me. I realized by mile 1 that my Garmin wasn't accurate - it had added around .3 miles, so the splits it was giving me weren't accurate. The pacing was messed up as well (no, I was not running at a 7:15 pace at any time). I ended up going in and turning off the mile alerts and autolap because they were functionally worthless around mile 4. From then on, I pressed the lap button myself, pacing myself by feel and using the mile splits to make adjustments. Really, no adjustments were necessary because I settled into a 10:35-10:40 pace which I hung onto the entire time. My splits were extremely consistent. The one thing that slowed me down was the ramp up onto the bridge and then the climb up Strawberry Hill. I shortened my stride, slowed my cadence slightly, and just kept plugging along up it, but that mile split was a minute or so slower than the rest - but then I got to lengthen my stride and cruise on down the hill on the other side, where I gained some time. I was in very good shape through the 10 mile marker. After that, I started to notice light cramping in my sides that hurt when I breathed (I also noticed a two-beat breathing pattern had replaced my normal three-beat pattern). I paid attention to that, in case I needed to slow down, but managed to maintain my pace despite it. When I approached the mile 12 marker, it was like I smelled the stables. I was able to accelerate a bit and start passing people. During the last 1/4 mile, curving around a slight incline to the finish, I kicked it into a new gear and finished hard (not a sprint, but an effort that got my HR up to 183!). I felt great going through the finish line, having completed my longest run ever by 3.1 miles, ahead of my estimated finish time, and without walking a single step.

Drink a little less on the way to the race. Other than that, I think I ran an excellent race.

Walked around a little to get my food and take pictures. Drove over to Reading Terminal Market (prob. should just have walked) and had some lunch (just a smoothie and pastry for me, since I wasn't hungry at all after the race). Took an epsom salts bath and will be stretching as soon as I finish this report.


Training. The training I got from Chris was excellent, but it started five weeks ago. The two separate injuries I had over the winter really compromised my ability to train for this. Despite those setbacks, Chris did an awesome job putting together a plan that got me where I needed to be in a limited amount of time.


The Love Run was a really well-organized race with decent crowd support (it would probably have been better if it hadn't been chilly and windy with impending rain). The course was pleasant to run, hitting up a number of Philly landmarks along the way. They changed the course this year, eliminating some of the hills, but there was still one decent one plus rolling terrain to make things interesting without being too hard.