Was there with my tri buddy Ellen, pacing her through her first half marathon. The goal was to hit 10m/m -- start out slow and then pick up the pace.

My plans were kind of thrown to the wind (hehe) when I realized how hard the course would be on the back half, coming back. The 22mph winds really made things difficult -- without that, it would have been an absolutely perfect running day.

Because of the conditions, I knew that 10m/m would be hard to accomplish, but I figured if we could pick up enough time with the wind at our backs, hopefully we wouldn't crash on the latter half because of the early effort.

Overall, I thought it went pretty well and we managed the race as best as we possibly could. With the exception of one uphill, we took it very easy on the way up, and cruised with the free speed on the way down. This strategy worked well -- on the miles that included a bridge, our pace was actually FASTER than it would otherwise had been.

Around mile 9 or 10, I could see that Ellen was fatiguing. At this point we had been running straight into the wind for about 25 minutes and it was really starting to wear on her. She was an trooper though -- our pace dropped off a little bit, but she mostly kept up with the pace I was setting.

At mile 12, I told her that we had about 10:20 to go 1.1 miles and asked her how badly she wanted the 10m/m pace...she gave me a hard look and said, "Get me there!", so we took off. :) Unfortunately, between here and there was the Clearwater Memorial Bridge. Like we had most of the others, we took it easy on the way up... but apparently not easy enough. We had to stop and walk for a bit, and that was probably the 12 seconds that we missed the 10m/m by.

Get in under 2:11!! I wished that I had us pick up just a little more time when it was easy and the wind was at our backs to bank for when it got tough. I was SO worried about going out too fast though -- I've done that to her before, and I swore to myself that I wouldn't do it again.

SO CLOSE. Oh well - she did awesome, and made it through her first half marathon wanting to do another one, so I guess my job was a success.

Oh - and next time I won't be so blinded by the fact that I'm going to Florida to run and bring gloves and a winter hat. :) It was CHILLY out there!!

Met up with her hubby at the finish line for some pictures (which I'm hoping to get my hands on so I can post them!), some food and then back to the hotel to GET WARM.


Wind. And the desire on my part to live up to my pacing buddy promise.


I enjoyed this race. Sure, it would have been nice if it were warmer and less windy, but otherwise, I liked it. Small race, though still chip timed. Like a smaller local 5k in terms of the packet pickup and post-race activities.

Still - it was 0 degrees in Chicago during the time I was in FL. So, how bad could it be??!