Monday, March 23, 2009

First race 2009 Mercer Island Half Marathon

I went into this race feeling well trained but with a bit of trepidation regarding some persistent hip soreness. The week prior I had backed off a bit from the more intense training and was starting to feel a bit better but it was still there in the back of my mind.

My coach had given some excellent advice for all of us on the team to make peace with the idea that the race was going to hurt. Tell yourself that at some point you are going to want to stop and try to convince yourself to just go one minute more..and then another.

Got to the race site early and without the kids which is unusual but good. I knew they were home sleeping and not standing in the cold waiting for me to finish. I was able to meet up with the team, drop my gear with them, warm up and get in line in plenty of time. I had about a 10 min warm up and lined up with the pack of 9-10 min per mile pacers.

Gun wet off and it took me over 2 min. to actually cross the start line due to the thousands in front of me. Race plan said to run 9:10's for the first 3 miles then off of HR for the rest of the race. I started out too fast since the first mile has a nice downhill stretch, ran about an 8:30 for the first mile and then pulled back to try to get back to the plan. I felt absolutely great until about mile 6 when the hip pain came back. It was at this point that the voice Coach Jill told us about started to talk to me and tell me to quit then and wait for medical. I reasoned that this was a bad idea as I had not seen any medical around and would therefor need to stand in the cold rain waiting. I was still holding a good pace and talked myself into staying in the race until mile 7 to see how I felt. Mile 7 and 8 came and went and then I convinced myself that even thought 8 is not particularly close to "being done" with 13.1 miles that I was almost finished and it would be silly to stop now.

At mile 9 the pain increased and I reminded myself that I had an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's coffee flavored frozen yogurt at home. I could eat all of it if I just kept at my pace and ran the race according to plan. I started to fall apart at mile 11-12 but had enough in the bank from some faster miles to give a little wiggle room.

The last hill was a killer but when I saw Jill and then Zot and the kids I pushed up and over and finished strong.

Goal was to break 2 hours and official time puts me at 1:59:51!!

Things that are good

1. Nutrition was spot on. 2 fuel belt bottles in my pockets with 175 calories each
2. Stuck with the race plan
3. Dressed just right..not to cold or warm
4. Broke 2 hours!

Things that could be better

1. I need to build up my pain threshold to get through Ironman
2. I still can barely walk almost 36 hours (and several ice baths) later


All in all a great race.