Race Report
Well, really I don't have much to report since this was pretty uneventful. I've mentioned earlier that I've had some hamstring issues recently, and these simultaneously impeded my training and made me reluctant to push too hard for this race. But it's our local half, and I know a bunch of the people running it, so I wanted to at least turn in a non-embarassing time. My goal was to run 8:30s all the way through and see how the hamstring held up, with my top priority being a healthy finish so I could be fresh when marathon training starts in a few weeks.
After two weeks of nothing but rain and sustained 20-30 mph winds, today was gorgeous and almost perfect for running. About 50 at the gun with no winds at all. Also very sunny, which at least beats rain.
My wife decided that she was going to go all-out for this to get a sense as to whether a BQ in October (which for her would be 3:50) is a reasonable goal, so she pretty much dusted me at the start.
Anyway, my splits were more or less as expected:
Mile 1 -- 8:28
Mile 2 -- 8:26
Mile 3 -- 8:51 (WTF? Not sure what happened here. Nothing eventful on the course).
Mile 4 -- 8:22
Mile 5 -- 8:34
Mile 6 -- 8:26
Mile 7 -- 8:29
Mile 8 -- 8:42 (meh)
Mile 9 -- 8:39 (meh)
Mile 10 -- 8:48 (This mile contains the one major hill on the course. It's only a quarter mile or so, but it's about a 20% grade up and down, and I had to shuffle both ways. I had planned on this split being terrible).
Mile 11 -- 8:24
Mile 12 -- 8:21
Mile 13 -- 8:00
Mile 13.22 -- 1.37
Overall: 1:52:02 (8:28/mi)
Yes, I ran a 13.22 half marathon. Obviously I need to work on my tangents better. I'm also not sure what happened on miles 8 and 9. I definitely wasn't tired at that point, but I guess I just let my pace slip a bit. If I was racing this for real, my pace on the last mile would indicate that I should have pushed harder on early on, but that's fine. The important thing is that despite an occasional ache here and there, my hamstring was fine. Also, it's encouraging that this was a fairly easy run overall. If I knew I was healthy and had no injury issues, I definitely could have knocked a couple of minutes off this time no problem. I'm shooting for 3:59:59 in the full, so the fact that I can do an easy 1:52 half makes this a very achievable and maybe a little over-conservative goal.
(FWIW, Mrs. Karamazov came in a 1:48
x, so she has bragging rights for now. Actually, she has a great shot at a BQ, which would give her bragging rights forever. Between that and the fact that she picked a better spouse than I did leaves me green with envy).
We're having a few of our running buddies over this evening for hamburgers, beer, and whiskey -- the cornerstones of any post-race recovery plan.