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 Run
Comments: I had two tasks for this race: pace Ellen to a 10m/m finish, and keep it a training run (z2, low z3) for me. To me, my primary responsibility for this run was to pace Ellen. Last time we did this (for her very first half mary in January), I came up 12 seconds slow. This time - despite the much more difficult course - I was intent on doing my best to bring this race home for her. The first 6 miles really did go by in a flash -- the pace was easy for me, and Ellen was still running very well. The next few miles, with some longer uphill sections, kind of took a lot of energy, but we were still moving along. The last 5k, however... Ellen was definitely at the brink of not being able to push much harder, but I'm proud of her -- she dug deep, put her head down and followed me along. This was a tough course for her, but she did an awesome job out there! What would you do differently?: Nothing. Took advantage of some early-on downhills to gain a little time, and then pushed through to the end, using gravity for some free speed. And I have a LOT of fun with pacing duty -- to me, there are few things as cool as helping someone meet and exceed their goals. I'm glad Ellen let me help her!  Post race
Warm down: Walked through the HUGE queue to get medals, water, accelerade, photos, food and then FINALLY out to meet everyone at our meeting spot. We had perfect running weather, but it got cold pretty quickly once we stopped moving. What limited your ability to perform faster: This was a training run for me, and it worked out perfectly. HR average was solidly z2, and some of the hills brought me into z3. I spent 75% of the race z1-z2, 25% in low-to-mid z3. Event comments: I love this race -- it's my 5th time doing it, and I'm sure I'll be back next year as well. Elite really puts on a great event. Even though the half marathon keeps getting more and more crowded (they had 25,000 1/2 mary runners this year!), they do a great job with the aid stations and have tons of volunteers out there. And the bands along the course really make things fun, too. My only complaint is that being in the middle of the pack (almost literally -- started in corral 15 out of 31), there was never really huge amounts of clear pavement ahead, and especially running with someone, it was difficult to navigate. Last updated: 2007-11-01 12:00 AM
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United States
Elite Racing
60F / 16C
Overcast
Overall Rank = 7344/21398
Age Group = F35-39
Age Group Rank = 486/2051
Up at 4:50am to shower and get ready to go (I know, I know... but I need the shower to wake myself up...). Then met up with Ellen to have a little bit of breakfast before leaving. We were lucky -- the Team In Training bus was taking all passengers to the race site, so we were able to send Kim (acting as our early morning chauffeur -- thanks!) back to bed.
Got there and it was raining, though not too badly. Of course, as we're starting to strip down to race gear, it starts POURING. The garbage bags came out, and we actually managed to stay fairly dry with them.
Ellen and I stood in the porta-potty line and Kelly took off to warm up and get in her corral. We worked our way through the line and got into our corral with plenty of time to spare -- and with our goal being to beat a 10m/m pace, no warm up was really needed.
Milled about in the corral, that's about it. Kept the garbage bags on until about 5 minutes before we crossed the start line (and we were offset from gun time by about 30 minutes) when it finally stopped raining. YAY!