Patrick and I started running together. Neither of us were as warmed up as we liked so we took the first mile or so as a warm up mile. I chatted his ear off. The poor guy. I think we split around a mile or a mile and a half. Then it was serious as they say.

I had many goals for the day I guess. Not all of them achievable and I was ok with that. The first as always was to finish. Especially for a race that every step added to my total distance was a PR. Finishing was key. The second goal was that I wanted to run 10 miles without stopping. I was supposed to in my training runs but was unable due to probably the heat and other factors. The 10 miles was probably the goal most on my mind.

After those two goals the rest were icing if you will. The first was that I'd like to run the entire half. Given that I've never run a 10 I thought that this might be a bit of a stretch. The second would be to beat 2:30:00. That was about 11.5 min a mile or so I think and I hoped to beat that but wasn't overly confident. The last goal I set was something to push me for sure. 2:11:00 is 10 minute miles for the entire race. I thought it was possible if I rocked the race as best as I could run now but I didn't think it was very likely.

So the first mile was a warm up mile and I noticed it was just under 10. I felt great so I decided to go for a little faster than that and see how it felt. The first couple of miles felt great. Right around mile 3 a couple passed me and then set a 9:30 pace or so. I decided to pace them. At mile 4 some guy starts passing me, slowly, and I ask how he is doing. We start chatting and end up talking from mile 4 - 8. My heart rate was pretty high but I was talking as if my breathing was normal so that was good for me. For those miles I was still at less than 10 and I started thinking that I might be able to hit 2:11! Then mile 8 hit me.

The end of mile 7 beginning of mile 8 was a fairly decent sized hill. As we were running up it the wind really picked up directly at us. This was the crunch point for me. As I ran the hill I looked at the garmin and I was doing 14 min miles. It was very hard climbing this hill and affected the rest of my run for sure.

When I hit 10 miles it was a relief because though I knew I was tired I knew I had enough in the tank to hit 2 of the last three goals. I knew that I was starting to run out of gas after that hill at mile 8 and I was slowing down fast but I could do it. Because of this I shelved the 2:11 because I didn't want to injure myself trying to hit it when I have more important races coming up. I did however speed up trying to get back to less than 11 minute pace. I passed some more people here and encouraged them. I even got a "well if you give me a carrot I'll have to follow." Man I love our jersey.

The last mile was really tough on me. As you can see in the numbers I really ran out of gas. Even given that I was really happy with my time.

Run more hills! :)

I crossed the finish line and actually kind of jogged another 10 feet before I realized that I could stop. I got some water and no finishing medal because they lost those apparently. Stupid.


I missed a few runs during my program since jan/feb but most of those I think were ok. Especially the two during taper week because I wanted to be sure my knees, shin, and left foot recovered some. So I think training as always but I hit pretty close to how well I could do this year.