River Rat Half Marathon Race Goals

When I originally signed up for tomorrow's half marathon, I also signed up for a half marathon the following weekend. Both races are ~45 minutes from home and cheap, and based on South Dakota's super unpredictable weather, I figured I would just check the forecasts leading up to the races to determine which one I would just run, and which one I would race.

Based on the weather forecast, next weekend's race should be cooler, and is a much easier (read: flatter) course. The course I'm doing tomorrow is my PR course, and don't ask me how in the heck that happened because it's got a monster hill, and hill is not my middle name.

Elevation map from the last time I did this race:

After re-reading my race report, that hill was only a mile long, not 3 as I had come to believe (or so it felt).

I emailed Jaseface last week for some advice on how to approach the race, as I want to get my money's worth out of the race, have a strong run, and gain some mental toughness that I can carry in to the following week's goal race. I do NOT want to carry dead legs in to the following week's goal race.

His suggestion was to run 3 easy/long run paced miles, followed by 2 hard miles until I finish the race. I asked if instead of that, I could do 3 easy, 2 hard x 2, and then for the remaining 5k do 2 easy and one hard. He said sure. Phew. One of strengths as a runner used to be finishing hard in races. I would practice doing it in most training runs, and I just knew I could go in to another gear at the end of races. I've been practicing that a bit more lately, and would like to continue doing that, particularly in this race. It also seems silly not to run hard toward a finish line, regardless if I'm racing the race or not. That's just the competitor in me, I think.

So that's the plan for tomorrow.

So what does that equate to for a finishing time?

Uh...

Good thing I'm good at math I guess. I'd imagine the easy miles will be around 10:30 pace (closer to 11:00 on the monster hill that never ends) and the hard miles around 9. [31.5+18= 49.5*2= 99+31]. That would put me near 2:10 I think. And yes I'm going to leave my random math there for you to ponder.

So what does that leave for next weekend? Ugh, who knows. We'll see how tomorrow feels. But yay goals again! Dare I say that running is becoming fun again?!?