Still Alive!

It's been a few days, so I don't blame anyone who may be wondering if I am still alive.  It is official . . . I finished the Charleston Half Marathon and I did not die!

Was there an actual risk of death?  Maybe more than I would have thought based on course safety, but that is a topic for another discussion.

I may have already mentioned, that I spent most of December in one state of illness or another (sinus infection and flu), so I did  not get any training in, thus, I was not as prepared for this race as I should have been.  Also complicating matters was this race’s funky time requirement.

The half marathon required all participants to maintain a minimum pace for the first 8 miles.  After that, pace did not matter.  So, I just needed to finish those first 8 miles on pace, and coast the rest of the way.  Simple, right?

Maybe not.  You see, I am a slow starter.  What that means is that my body takes a while to warm up.  (Just trust me on this, I’ve been here before).  In fact, I typically start half marathons by walking briskly the first couple of miles to warm up, which allows me to perform better throughout the entire race and have enough left to finish happy.  Happy is good.  Unfortunately, my brisk walking pace was not going to cut it, so I needed to develop an alternate strategy for this race.

I knew I was going to have to start this race by going directly into my run/walk intervals.  (I’ve told you all that I alternate between running and walking, right?)  I didn’t want to push so much those first 8 miles that I would have to crawl for the last 5 miles.  Considering my lack of training, crawling was not out of the realm of possibility . . . fortunately, it did not come to that.

I developed a plan with the following considerations:

• I set a brisk target pace indicator on my Garmin to alert me if I was not walking fast enough.  Usually on rest segments I let my body dictate what feels comfortable, but I knew this time I did not have the luxury.
• I increased my run interval by 15 seconds for each run.  However, I set a target pace to alert me if I was running too fast.  That is correct; I actually forced myself to SLOW my run pace. 

Ready to go!

Did my new strategy work?  Mostly.

I was easily able to maintain the minimum pace for the first 8 miles.  My average pace was a minute faster than the minimum.  I kept pushing myself, telling myself that once I hit mile 8, I’d allow myself a long recovery walk break.  Well, my walk break lasted the remainder of the race.  The last mile was one of the longest miles I’ve ever travelled, but I did find some kick to run to the finish. 

This was not my best half marathon performance ever, but it was also not my worst.  I missed my personal record (PR) by only 7 minutes.  However, I felt pretty done at the end and I was definitely sore.

Would I have liked to have had a better finish?  Yes.  But, I am not displeased with my performance.  After all, this is technically a solid training run for next month right?