Kentucky Derby Mini Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

I was a bit nervous about this race. I have been putting in a lot of miles since January to prepare for this race and to have a good base for IMKY. I felt like I was running as good as I ever have. However, I got sick about 4 weeks ago. That took a lot of steam out of my sails mentally. Additionally, I had a horrible training run on this past Wednesday that further added to my doubts about my performance in this race. My goal all season has been to shoot for PR in this year and I simply thought that was out of the cards at this point. My previous best in a half marathon was 1:48:46, which I set during this race back in 1999, the last stand-alone half marathon I've ran. I ended up 17 seconds shy of my goal today. Even though I didn't hit the PR mark, was very pleased with my overall performance.

Although I wore my Garmin to collect information, I completely raced by feel today. The gun went off and it took a couple minutes before I was able to cross the starting line with the mat for the timing chip. Once I was able to really start moving I got up to speed with a pace that felt solid, but sustainable. The race had pacers for the people who were opting to run the full marathon. After about a mile the pacer for 3:40:00 marathon people passed and I thought that seemed like a reasonable pace for a while, so I latched on to them until roughly the 6 mile mark where I slowly pulled ahead of that group. Mile 8-9 was running through the infield of Churchill Downs. It was after that point that I could start to tell that I was going to have to hang on, because things weren't getting any easier for me. Miles 10 and 11 were mentally tough, but I was able to maintain a fairly stable pace. I was truly happy to see the 12 mile marker, because I knew that it would all be over in a matter of minutes. I was being to struggle a bit and guy came up on my right. I thought this is it. This one guy is not going to pass me. The short story is that he did pass me :), but not until the final stretch where he was able to out sprint me. I stayed with him until the final turn where we both opened it up with whatever we had left.

In the grand scheme of things I'm pleased with my race. However, I wish that I had a bit more confidence going into it. Would have made the difference in getting a PR or not? I don't know, but I DO know that it wouldn't have hurt.

Walked around the post race area. Drank a bottle of water and a couple bottles of power-aide.


If anything it was lack of confidence that I was back to par after being sick. I allowed myself to think that too much was lost and there wasn't enough time to make it back up. The realty is that I probably hadn't missed a beat.


Nicer post race activities than I remember from this race back in 1999. They had live music, tons of different drink and food options, including beer!