Consistency

It's been over 18 months since I ran my PR in a half-marathon here in KC, and today I was trying to beat that. This morning I ran the inaugural Five Trails Half Marathon in Leavenworth, KS, along with 265 other finishers. Rain threatened to make it even more interesting than it was, yet it somehow stayed away until I was almost to the finish line.

By the numbers, I missed beating my PR by two seconds. In October 2008 I finished in 1:48:11. In May 2010 my official time was 1:48:13. I suppose you could say I was consistent. This event wasn't chip timed, and according to my Garmin I finished in 1:48:05 from the actual starting line to the somewhat ambiguous finish line. It was weird because they had a chute at the end but no marked finish line that I could see. By the time I hit stop on my timer I was 2/3 of the way down the chute. But I'm going by official time, so the PR remains to be broken. I finished 8th of 20 in my age group, and 53rd of 266 overall. For those who are counting, I slipped just inside the top 20%. Yeah me!

I knew there would be some big hills, but mentally I was thinking that would be it and the rest of it would be mostly level or downhill. Wrong. The uphills were tough but nowhere near as bad as the uphill everyone, including the winners, had to walk in Columbia last year. And after the hill they call "Pike's Peak," the downhill was so steep I just let it fly with the help of gravity and had probably my fastest mile ever in competition. For several minutes I was hitting a 6:30/mile pace. Yeah, I know, elites hit that without going downhill. Whatever.

I suppose the big takeaway for me in all this is that 19 months later I came up with the same overall time on a much tougher course. The KC Half has some uphills, but it's nowhere near as rolling as this one was. Also, the conditions that day were durn near perfect, whereas today the humidity was pretty high. If I learned anything from the Heart of America Marathon, it's that humidity is a killer for runners. So all in all I feel really good about my time. Even though I went into it not feeling like I was in prime shape, I don't think I would have had this time on this course in October 2008. I suppose experience and continued hard work pays off.

One thing I was thinking and then talked about with Alan was that a half-marathon is a whole lot different from a full. Duh. Nevertheless, after running this race I didn't feel the rest of the day like I was half-dead and going to throw up at some point. Recovery from this should be pretty quick and maybe in a month or so I can run another. My thought is that in training for a full you break your body several times on long runs as well as in the race, whereas in a half you push some limits as far as speed goes but it doesn't break you down like running 26.2 miles does. That's probably why the half is the most popular distance these days.

For a first running, the organizers did a great job. Plenty of volunteers, in fact almost too many, from packet pick-up to course monitors to finish line to the refreshment area. I was talking to Alan on the phone afterward and told him I thought about picking up his packet, but what's the point? He wouldn't be able to wear the shirt anyway since he didn't run the race. Anyway, he asked me if I would run it again and I said yes, absolutely I would. Great organization and a big thanks to the people who volunteered and made it come off so well.

It seems weird to run my first race so late in the year, but let's just call it the beginning. Time to plan for the next one, wherever it may be. As for today, I had a good nap and then a nice T-bone for dinner. Tradition!