I initially wanted to run this just for the practice on hills and to gain some strength that way. Talking with AJ (my coach) earlier in the week, he was talking about how he's doing more things to 'race into shape' this year, and that since there's enough time to recover from this, I might as well go for it and see what happens. If I blow up at mile 10, who gives a shit; at least we'll learn something from the effort. I studied the map to a decent degree so I knew where the hills were and what to expect. Obvioulsy, that's a lot different than actually running them. And I still had a difficult time trying to figure out what pace I'd run at, but let that go and decided to run on feel to see where that put me. The first hill is up what is appropriately called Monster Mountain. It's 6.4% grade for the first mile, a 1/4 mile recovery and then 9.2% grade for the next 3/4 mile. That sucked, but also did a good job of weeding out the pack early on instead of wading through them for the first mile or so. Once I got clear of that hill, I felt really good and was holding a faster pace than I expected without a lot of effort. Kept that up and had a Gu at about 25' in and just before another hill at 5.1% grade. That hill was manageable, but the downhill really sucked and beat up my quads. That thing was steep and you really had to control your effort or else tired legs would give out easily. I still felt good and knew the last hill was around mile 7 so I was waiting for that and subsequently let up my pace a little bit to bring my HR down and be ready for it. Funny part of that was that on the downhill I passed a couple cute girls who were clearly good runners and it looked like they had run collegiately. As they were catching back up, it sounded like a herd of elephants since about 7 guys were running directly behind them. Anyway, the hill hit and I kept my pace up it and paced another guy (training for the Colfax Marathon in support of the Denver Rescue Mission. He had spent the last 1.5 years of his life helping his son progress through a New Life program, recovering from drug addition, which it appears he has since his son will be attending college in the fall). We ran together for a couple miles and then he took off and I couldn't hold on. That was about mile 9.5, which was the first sign that my legs were starting to feel the effects of the hills. In my initial plan, I expected to hold a 7'/mile pace for the last 5 miles, but I don't think that happened. At that point it was a constant conversation with myself trying to keep good form. Once I hit mile 12, I passed a small pack and didn't want them to catch back up. Then I hopped on some guys feet with a 1/4 mile to go, followed him into the chute, and planned on outkicking him. Once he realized I was there, he took off and I had nothing left to go on. Still a good run as it was a half marathon personal best.

Maybe know the course a little better (at all), but I think my effort was good.

Walked a little, got a massage, and had a beer while talking with Julia, Melanie and others.


Hills.


Definitely a good race on a challenging course, which made it fun. I was fine with not as many drink stations, but would have liked there to be pace groups at the start like there were at the Platte River Half Marathon. Just a sign saying that if you expect to run this pace, start here, etc.