Cal City Half Marathon

Over the past few years I've developed a routine for the Chicago Marathon. Three weeks out from the marathon, I try and pretend that it is just a regular training week. I try and convince myself that I'm not tapering for anything, and then at the end of the week, I run a small half-marathon by my house. Usually, about halfway through the week, I get lazy and decide that I really should be tapering and it's more important to get a good confidence boost from the half in a few days, so I start slacking off. This year was no exception.

For some reason , there is always someone at this race who is faster than me. When I was running a 1:21, there was some guy who would run a 1:17. When I got down to 1:17, there was a 1:14 guy there. When I got down to 1:14, the 1:12 guy started showing up. This year, I didn't know what I was capable of, and I really didn't recognize anyone who I knew could beat me. I mean it looked like there was a decent pack of fast looking guys, but no one who I knew that would beat me.

So the gun went off, with little to no warning, and we were off. My friend Dave's, pre-game pick for the winner, was out like a shot and quickly opened a nice little lead on me. I really wanted to go out slow on that first mile, but with this guy going out so hard, I lost all perspective on a decent pace, and hit the first mile in 5:13. Yikes. I'm gonna pay for that.

At that point, I knew that this guy was out of my league, and besides the goal of this race was to run strong, not win, so I from here I wanted to just settle into a nice pace and not worry about place. Not that it mattered. I was cemented in second place. I was able to get into a nice rhythm right around a 5:30 for the next bunch of miles though and was actually surprised at how fast the miles were flying by.

However, due to my completely self-defeating attitude, I kept waiting for the bonk to happen. I was pretty much in unchartered territory for the entire race. I was really closer to my historical 5K race pace than my historical half marathon race pace, so I really was unsure if I could maintain it. At every mile split, I just kept thinking, OK, if I do 6 min/miles from here on in, could I still PR? Finally around mile 7 or 8, it actually became possible to do 6 min/miles and still PR. For whatever reason that gave me some confidence, since I knew I could probably limp home and still come away with a decent time.

I can't say I ever really struggled during the race though, although miles 8-11 were the only ones that I let myself drift into the 5:40+ range. I say drift, because it was during those miles, where I just kept telling myself to get to mile 11, and then you can push as hard as you want. So I guess subconsciously, I took things easy and let the pace drift a little. Or maybe I was just tired.

I was able to recover at 11 though and got back under 5:40 for the 12th mile and ran my second fastest mile of the day (behind the insanely fast opening mile) for my last mile. I came across the line in 1:12:13, which is a PR almost 2:30. However, after checking my Garmin and many other Garmins at the race, the course was short by .15 miles. So for PR purposes, I took my average pace for the run, which was 5:34, and extrapolate (thank-you. Didn't even have to look that word up) that out to the full 13.1 miles which gives me a PR of 1:12:58. Also, my 10K & 10 mile split both blew away my previous PRs at those distances, but I guess I'll wait for a real race to update those PRs.

Here are the splits from the race: