First Half ½ Marathon - Race Report

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent the past weekend [and a long weekend at that ~ yay for BC’s new Family Day] in Vancouver hanging out and catching up with friends, and watching many hours of ‘The Walking Dead’. Oh, and of course, I also ran the First Half Half Marathon on Sunday morning.

Let’s recap that, shall we?

The weather was absolutely perfect and it was a stunningly beautiful course. I’m not sure you could ask for a better day.

Anyway, as I said before, I didn’t really plan on going out and ‘racing’ this so much as I planned to work on pacing and hitting a nice even split. While it may not be quite as satisfying as smashing a PB, I did managed to achieve my pacing goals for this race, and you know, there is a nice little sense of accomplishment in that too.

I’m pretty sure I said I didn’t care what the pace was, but in the back of my mind, I wanted to be somewhere around 5:20/km. I knew 5:20/km could feel either challenging or super comfortable for me, just depending on the day. On top of that, this pace is right around the goal pace I’m looking at for the marathon in May, so I sort of figured if I could get through 21k feeling good at this pace then that would be a good sign. (Judge my naïve thoughts if you will, but remember, I’ve never really raced a marathon before).

The first 2k was definitely a bit fast. I’m going to blame this mostly on Kirsten, although in reality, she isn’t the only one who got a bit caught up in the excitement of the race start. She does tend to go by the ol’ “fade from the front” philosophy, but on Sunday, she was a good sport and settled into a pretty consistent and steady pace with me not long after that 2k mark.

Anyway, I don’t have a tonne of thoughts on the day. Sometimes I felt like I was running at my pace, and sometimes I felt like I was running at Kirsten’s pace (although, I’m sure she’ll deny that)… but for most of the time, I just felt good.

All the way up and through about 14/15km I felt like I could have been running a bit faster, but admittedly, I was a bit worried about fading toward the end, so I definitely played it a bit safe (especially since my longest run in months has been just shy of 16k).

About the 15km/16km I was pretty aware that I was starting to have to work harder to maintain the same pace (and mentally, about this time, I hit the point where I was just ready to be finished), but I still didn’t feel like I was necessarily slowing or falling off the pace too much.

Unfortunately the only real issue was about the 18k mark when “nature called” and well, my guts just got very unhappy, very suddenly.

Kirsten urged me to pick up the pace and my grumbling response was “if I pick up the pace, I’m going to crap my pants!” I may have said this a little louder than I intended, so apologies to anyone who was running around me at that point, haha.

(Side note: because I didn’t actually end up messing myself, I obviously find this moment in the race to be quite hilarious, but have found my non-runner friends really don’t enjoy a good poo story as much as I do - what up with that?).

Anyway, needless to say, the “poo butt clench” that was happening made those final few km a little uncomfortable and a bit of a slog (and may have even made my form a little awkward). I know in a longer race that a quick pit stop would hopefully make things better, but obviously at that moment on Sunday, there was no point in stopping.

So yeah, overall the pace/km may have jumped around a little, but not too wildly – and the first half of the race was almost identical to the second half for overall time, so I can’t complain about that.

Of course, I still do truly believe I can run a faster half, because really, other than the upset guts, I did feel pretty great when this was all over. My body and legs were obviously tired after, but I feel like I bounced back (or am bouncing back) pretty well.

All that said, I do feel like I need to stop saying “I think I can run a faster half” and actually go out and prove it at some point in the near future. Stay tuned for that.

Info for the stat junkies…
Gun Time = 1:51:23
Chip Time = 1:51:01
Average pace/km = 5:16 (or 5:14 according to Garmin, as I apparently ran 21.21km)