I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 3:45am on Saturday ready to go for race day. For once, I slept well. And my stomach didn't seem to be too terribly angry for once. Wins! Toni and her husband picked me up at 4:50 and we were off! Driving through such terrible fog that I couldn't look at the window without getting dizzy from the lack of visibility. Woof.
We got to the race start with plenty of time to pick up our bibs, hit the restrooms, do my glute drills, and do a short warm up with strides. My legs felt a lot better than they had all week, and the temps were cool. I was pretty psyched to get going! My race plan was to take the first 3 miles easy at 9:15, followed by 5 at 8:45, and the last 5 as hard as I could. The temps were good and I was ready to run hard and see if I could run a time in the mid 1:50s.
We lined up near-ish the front, and I used my knowledge of the race course to know which side of the street to be on for the many many turns throughout the course. I'm always at least .1 over on this race, so I try to run tangents like a beast to minimize that. I checked in with my Garmin shortly into mile 1 and saw that I was running an 8:45 so I settled in a bit, ready to stick to the plan not to go out too fast so I could really take advantage of those later miles. Later in the mile I felt like I was running a peppy 9:15 and was closer to a 9:35. I knew that mile two was a gradual downhill and mile three was gradual uphill so I opted to try to run closer to "feel" than spot on pace. Note to future Jeri: planning to run this race in pace sections doesn't work as almost every other mile is slight uphill followed by slight downhill. Additional side note: running by feel is hard.
The first few miles felt okay, but I was surprised that I didn't feel like I was holding back. Which made me feel nervous. My heart rate was higher than it typically would be at these paces, and the humidity was having me breathe much harder than my effort was necessitating. Ugh, and the snot. It just wouldn't be the Brookings half without an obnoxious cold to be snotting my way through.
1. 9:25
2. 9:14
3. 9:39
I was excited to dig into the quicker miles starting with mile 4. I was also excited to be running on mostly flat for the next few miles before we had some more gradual inclines coming up. I passed a few people during the pick up of pace and then shortly there after was a relay exchange and people started flying by me.
4. 9:11
5. 9:22
6. 9:08
There was a long gradual uphill that started during mile 6 at 6.67 (yes I did go through my previous race profiles and notate the length of the uphills to study prior to the race so I couldn't convince myself DURING the race that "this incline is going to last forever!!" nope, it will stop, eventually :P). I tried to pick it up in the small decline leading up to that, and was still fairly pleased with where I was at during the halfway mark of the race. My average pace was 9:20, and while I knew I didn't have 8:40s in me to finish out the race at a 9 pace, I didn't feel terrible and thought I could run 9s to the finish. Somehow that math in my head had me running about the same time as the 605 half. That math is wrong, btw.
After the mile uphill from 6.6-7.6 I was feeling a bit tired but still ready to turn it up the final five miles of the race. I knew that there was just 1.25 of uphill running left and I was ready to run hard for the final five miles.
7. 9:01
8. 9:31
I kept pushing harder, but my times were staying the same, and my heart rate was just climbing and climbing. Somewhere after the big uphill through the park at mile 9 I recalculated my finishing time and discovered I would need to run insanely fast, all out, 120% to finish the race in 2:02. Ugh. It was around this time that I decided to pull back the effort level to a long run pace. My justification, at the time, and one I'm still ok with several days out from the race, is that I have another half in 5 weeks and if I didn't care whether I got a 2:02 or a 2:08, why not set myself up for less recovery time leading up to the next one.
Ok then.
For the last 4 miles I tried to pretend that Toni was running along side me on a bad long run day. I tried to imagine all the complaints I would throw her way and all the fun stories she'd tell me to take my mind off of how bad the run was sucking. Despite slowing down, my heart rate really wasn't coming down much, so I still felt like I was working really hard, which was even more annoying!
9. 9:39
10. 10:12
I knew miles 11 and 13 were downhill and mile 12 was an uphill, so I just enjoyed the reprieve on mile 11. When the half and full split off I felt really alone, especially with the uphill of mile 12 staring me in the face. I took a tiny walk break at the start of mile 12 and another at the top to take a water and a Powerade. My hands and fingers were so swollen, I was really wishing I had brought more than one salt pill with, and I rarely drink anything but water during a race but I thought my body was probably needing it. I was drenched in sweat and could taste the salt on my face. Yum. :P
When we got to 1.5 miles to go, mostly downhill, I couldn't even convince myself to pick it up. I was really just ready to be done. Luckily a couple of SFWR pulled past me during mile 13 and I let them pull me along a little bit. I did pick it up with .4 to go, convincing myself it was less than an 800 meter on the track.
11. 9:59
12. 10:21
13. 8:53
.21 1:41 8:02 pace
I finished the 13.21 miles (possibly my worst tangents on this course) in 2:05:21, for a pace of 9:29. Which is somehow 20 some seconds faster than last years race, with a couple of walk breaks. oops.
Being the type of person that likes to analyze everything, I'm really okay with this performance. I'm someone who thinks that we put in the work from day to day to get that one perfect unicorn day in which everything aligns the body+the mind+the course+the weather, to that magical performance day. And we get a LOT of not perfect days along the way. This was a not perfect day for me. And that's totally okay.
I think that under normal circumstances, my legs would be healed up from a half marathon in three weeks to race another. I think based on the issues I had with my glutes not working at all during the 605 half, my quads were forced to pick up the slack, BIG TIME and are taking much longer than normal to recover. I had to stop several times during our long run the previous weekend to stop and stretch my "quarter" (the joke I kept making because one of my quads was seriously so tight still from the race). I also had to stop to stretch extra during our speed session. And was spending extra time foam rolling and sticking my quads. I was so gungho about running a better race at Brookings, that I may have neglected to listen to my body 100% and fully recover.
I also think that the humidity effected me pretty significantly. Up until mile 9.5 when I threw in the towel a bit, my effort levels for the race matched my pace plan. Yet the paces were starkly different than the planned paces. To keep pushing that long, was a bit of a mental win with me. If Brookings had been my last race of the spring, I definitely would've gutted it out to work for that 2:02.
Grandma's might be worse weather, it could be hot AND humid. But maybe it won't be. So we'll see what June brings up nort' for one less stab at a fast half marathon time this "spring"!
