Unfortunately, for most almost all of my March my training stopped because of work on the roof, root canals, and work constraints. About 3 weeks ago, I realized that the race was coming up and the longest run I had done was 8 miles. Not good. So first I reset my goal 2:30. Slow I know, but given my lack of training, the reality was that finishing at all would be difficult and that I would need to walk a fair amount of the distance.
So with that stark reality facing me, 3 weeks ago, I decided that my Saturday long slow run had to go 11 miles, no matter how long it took and it would be just fine to do lots of walking. Which was good because at mile 8 I hit the wall. My legs cramped up and I couldn't run anymore, just walk. But with a little help from a Sonic Route 44 slush from AM, I managed to finish in a total time of 2:16 for 11 miles. Not very promising for a 2:30 finish.
The week after, having failed to get in more than 1 short run during the week, I decided I had to run at least 11 miles again. This time I finished around 2:09 on a very flat course (BM Blvd), and was able to run 3 miles, walk for a minute, then run miles, walk, etc... At 2:09 for my finish time, there seemed to be some chance of finishing in 2:30, even though it was very troubling that even on my short runs I barely run 10 minute per mile pace, which is usually my out of shape pace for short runs.
My friend SI from Alabama had decided to run with me. SI had qualified for the Boston Marathon a couple of years ago, but had not run in about a year as part of an agreement with his wife until he finished his PhD dissertation. With the end in sight, he was able to register and did a couple of weeks of training, which would have allowed him to run about a 1:50 half if he had chosen. But instead, he agreed to pace me. He had previously paced me to my half-marathon PR of 1:53 on the very flat TK course, but this would be a very different run.
Saturday morning dawned bright and hot. We started in corral 22, which meant we didn't actually cross the starting line until 45 minutes after the starting gun went off. The race drew about 30,000 people, most doing the half, and I had never started off in a corral so far back before in this race and I hope never to do it again. It was horrible. I never felt like we ever got to a place where everyone was running at a similar pace, and there would continually be walls of people who had stopped to walk or go slow on narrow streets that forced lots of maneuvering and slowing down and speeding up. In the early corrals, this trouble of unequal pace usually goes away by mile 3 or 4, but I guess in the late corrals it never does.
I had told SI that I was treating this run like a backpacking hike. My goals were to live off the land (eat all the good stuff from rest stops), enjoy the views from the various hills (of which there are many on this course), cover the distance, and maybe see a bear or two. My one final goal was to run the last two miles. For a long while the run was fun, as I was essentially having a long extended conversation with SI as we weaved through traffic. For the most part, the land yielded up good things: oranges (my race favorite), bananas, strawberries, cytomax, water and once some GU packets. (SI found a bush loaded with about 10 packets, good pickin' indeed.) At mile 7, I felt pretty good about how things were going. We weren't running very fast, but I didn't feel like I was blowing through my reserves either. But after mile 7, I started feeling a bit leaden and over time the feeling got stronger and my run became more and more simply a shuffle. Hills especially. And more and more I just wanted to stop running and walk. But through mile 9 I kept to my goal of running 3 miles than walking ~1 minute. Around this time I also saw my bear. Poor fellow must have been pretty hot in his furry outfit in the blazing heat of the day. So there was only one goal left: running the last two miles. (This was a goal because in my last two halfs, I had ended up walking the last two miles.) Unfortunately, SI held me to this goal, when I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted just to stop shuffling and start walking.
RUNNING WITH THE GEEZERS
I don't know if shuffling was actually any faster than walking but I did more or less run the last two miles (except at the water station, which was planned). SI ran the last two miles going backwards, I think mostly to have something to do while I went along at a turtle pace. Finally the finish line came into sight and I accelerated from my 13 minute per mile pace to my 12 minute per mile pace and crossed over the finish line. With a great relief I found a place to collapse for about 10 minutes.
Splits:
Mile 1 9:44
Mile 2 19:47 (10:03)
Mile 3 30:24 (10:38)
Mile 4 41:10 (10:46)
Mile 5 52:14 (11:03)
Mile 6 1:02:26 (10:12)
Mile 7 1:13:38 (11:12)
Mile 8 1:24:18 (10:41)
Mile 9 1:35:06 (10:48)
Mile 10 1:45:56 (10:50)
Mile 11 1:58:12 (12:21)
Mile 12 2:10:39 (12:22)
Mile 13.1 2:23:14 (11:46).
So there it is. I finished under 2:30. I set my masters career personal record! It wasn't pretty, but thanks to the encouragement of SI, I reached all my revised goals.
Just for comparison I looked up my old times and placement in this race over the years.
2000 (full marathon) 4:42 (53rd percentile of finishers)
2004 (half) 2:01 (17th percentile)
2005(half) 1:55 (14th percentile)
2006(half) 2:04 (21st percentile) (this is the race where I was in the best shape of my running life and targeting a 1:50 and tore my hamstring the week before the race in my final speed work session, and then retore it during the race, I was so mad.)
2007 (half) 2:09 (32nd percentile)
2009 (half) 2:23 (42nd percentile)
UPDATE:
Some of you may know that a 25 year old Army sergeant collapsed after finishing the half-marathon and died shortly thereafter. His name was announced in the news today and I looked up were he finished by the race clock, because given his finish time, I thought it might have occurred about when we were finishing. Based on his clock time, he probably came in and collapsed about 20-25 minutes before us, but there were no clues at the finish line that such a major incident had occurred only a short time before. His sister and father apparently were running in the race as well, and based on her clock time for the finish, the sister must have been somewhere pretty near us. I hope that someone was there to identify her and take her somewhere private to give her the news.
