This was my first time running this race. The weather was almost perfect: around 55 degrees, sunny, with only a little wind. About half the course was on a straight road, starting out running into the light wind for a few miles and slightly uphill. The other half was a loop that we went around twice, with lots of ups, downs, and turns on different surfaces: mostly asphalt trail and sidewalk with some road and unpaved trail. I sometimes enjoy difficult courses, but in a couple of ways this course was somewhat poorly organized. First, before we reached the loop there was a turn-around and slower runners didn't get out of the way to allow faster runners space on the road, because there was nothing forcing them or even indicating to do so. This forced us onto a sidewalk for a while and caused us to miss a water stop by having to run behind it on the sidewalk. Second, on the second time around the loop, the narrow, curvy course was full of slower runners. So faster runners had to do a lot of weaving over those 2.5 or so miles. As for my own performance, I wasn't hoping for much, given my light training of late. But since my half marathon PR (currently 1:26:34, or 6:36/mi. pace) is quite soft, I aimed to beat it anyway. Though I failed by 30 seconds, finishing in 1:27:05, a 6:39/mi. average pace, this course was more difficult than the course on which I set my current PR. I also ran this race at a more or less consistent pace, as opposed to my huge positive split when I set my PR. So this must be ranked as my best half marathon to date, such as it is. I enjoyed running it too, in spite of the problems I just mentioned, mainly because I had a few other runners to compete with. One guy and I ran together for virtually the entire race, trading the lead at different points and pushing one another. In the 8th mile I started getting tired and actually stopped briefly at a water stop to make sure that I actually got water and got a gel down, since I had missed water at several earlier stops and remembered my bad gel experience at the MCM last year. It took me a couple miles to catch back up with the guy I had been running with, by which time another guy and the top woman were also running nearby. We were a pack of four, running in places 7-10, when we finished the second loop and returned in mile 11 to the long, straight road that would take us to the finish line. At that point, I figured that I was probably faster than the others and could beat them all in a sprint at the finish, after climbing and then descending a hill just before the finish, if I just hung with them until the end. That would have been the best strategy consistent with my stated goal of running to win or to place as highly as possible, since no other runners were close by. But I decided instead to test my distance chops by picking up the pace slightly for a long drive from two miles out. Pretty much right away I gapped the others and was unaware of what was going on behind me until I ascended the hill towards the end of mile 13, when the familiar guy I had been running with from almost the start passed me. I passed him again on the downhill, but he and the other guy passed me again shortly before the finish. Because of my long drive, I couldn't accelerate much at all at the end, but at least I ended up with a top 10 finish (9th) ahead of the top woman. Although my pace was pretty pedestrian and really should be about my marathon pace when I'm training properly, still this was a fun and encouraging run given my recent training. I'm not in a bad place to begin my build up for Fall marathon training. The night after this race, however, I came down with the (initially stomach) flu bug that is now a plague on my entire household. So I'll take a very light recovery week to get over this bug before resuming my gradual ascent in weekly mileage, after running 55 miles last week. It's not a bad idea to give my legs a little rest now anyway.
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