Monday Morning Marathon Meet-Up: Race Day Recap!

After four long months of marathon training, Saturday was finally race day.  As most of you probably know, after sustaining a foot injury that set me back in my training, I had to drop down to the half marathon.  I’ll admit that even the night before the race, I considered throwing caution to the wind and attempting the full.  I know plenty of folks who have run a marathon with the level of training I had, or less.  If I had paced myself, I think there’s a decent chance I could have finished.  But there’s also a good chance that I would have been miserable doing it, and that I may not have been able to run for a while if I had tried.  I thought about my grandmother, and everyone else who has tried to be a voice of reason.  I thought about the half-marathon I’ve already paid a ridiculous amount of money to run at the end of April, and the team of girls I’m running it with.  And ultimately, I think I made the wise decision.

But it was hard to pin on my marathon bib knowing I would only be running the half.  It sucked to have to come clean when the lady I was chatting with at the start line said, “Oh, you’re doing the full, good luck!”  And it sucked even more to have to take a left at mile 12 towards the half-marathon finish line as all my blue-bibbed counterparts merged right.  But overall, I was definitely able to look on the bright side and be grateful that I was able to run at all.  Both of the folks I signed up to do this marathon with were sidelined entirely by knee injuries.

This whole experience has definitely made me realize how very different half-marathons are from full marathons.  A half-marathon is an awesome accomplishment, but it’s one that even an amateur runner can achieve.  Sure, you might not do it very quickly and you might be pretty sore the next day, but put your mind to it and you can run a half-marathon.  A full marathon, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast.  It takes serious commitment and a great deal of training.  And frankly, it takes a bit of luck.  There’s a lot that can happen when you’re training for or running 26.2 that is entirely out of your control.

Race Summary:
Okay, enough pontifiacting.  Let’s talk about the race!   Last week, I set a new goal for myself:  to set a PR for the half-marathon distance.  I’ve run four half-marathons prior to this, and with the exception of the one for which I can’t locate the results, each one has gotten faster.  My first, the Zooma Annapolis in May 2009, took me 2:01:37 (a 9:17 pace).  Six months later, I ran the Rock ‘n Roll San Antonio with no training in 2:01:15.  And last fall, already having a marathon under my belt,  I ran the Navy half in 1:56:26 (a 8:54 pace).  So that was the number to beat.

While I think the race was fairly well organized overall, there were a lot of runners (nearly 20,000 half-marathoners in addition to over 3,500 full marathoners), so there was naturally some congestion towards the beginning.  However, it thinned out relatively smoothly and I was able to catch my stride.  I felt the excitement of race day, of all the other runners and the folks on the sidelines cheering us on with cowbells and funny signs, and I was able to enjoy the moment and settle into a pretty decent pace.  There was a huge hill between mile six and seven, which slowed me down a bit, but seeing my friend Josh at the top of the hill and getting text messages from my friend Ashley who was tracking my time via text message energized me and I was able to hold a steady pace in the low eights.  I don’t know what got into me at mile 11.  I could see the Capitol, and I knew that I only had a mile before I would see my friend Holly cheering for me at mile 12, and that from there I would only have a mile to go to the finish line.  I could feel that I was pushing myself very hard, and I reigned it back in a bit, conserving my energy for the final push.  I was able to sprint through the finish, ultimately shaving exactly six minutes off of my previous half-marathon PR and sustaining a sub 8:30 pace, an accomplishment I am very pleased with.  I’ve come a long way since my first half, nearly four years ago.

So, what’s next, now that the race is done?  Well, don’t hold me to it, but I’m pretty sure my marathon career is over, with only one marathon under my belt.  From here on out, I think I’ll stick to halves.  They feel like a healthier distance, a happy-medium if you will.  For starters I’m signed up for the Nike Women’s half-marathon at the end of April.  I may start to experiment with speed work, which is something I’ve never done.  If I’ve shaved twelve minutes off my half-marathon pace simply by being a more dedicated runner, I’m interested to see what I can do if I actually focus on speed.  I’m not going to set a specific target, but simply aim to do better each race.  Seems like a reasonable goal, but the faster you get the harder it really is.

Pre-race dinner: Chipotle burrito the size of my face

Johanna