Crazy Race Not Race Day: After maybe 2 hours of sleep, got up at 4am. Today was a 1/2M race point to point, so we met at 5:15am to drop cars off at the finish and then 3 of us road to the start. Ran 5 miles warm up progressive ranging from 9/mile down to 8:15/mile. Then we did 1 .2 mile pick up downhill @ 6:00/mile pace about 3 or 4 minutes before the start. Race temps were good around 60 degrees and probably didn't get much higher by the finish, but rather humid. Paced with Matt through his race (he did great all things considered). I have the splits but it just not worth digging out. We probably ran our first 6 around 7:30 pace and I was feeling terrible, bloated and nauteous. A couple times I almost felt like telling Matt to just go. Nevertheless, we pressed on. Decided to back off a touch for 2 miles (7:45s) and then picked it up for a couple 7:25s. Somewhere during mile 10 Matt's calf sorta blew out on him and we walked about .25 miles. He was ready to pack it in and just cruise it out. He said something about no PR today, at which point I quickly informed him with just over 2 miles to go he had 20 minutes left to hit his PR. We made our last 2 miles around 8s and he ended up with a PR by about 3 or 4 minutes. The plan was to finish off 20 on the cool down, but we just were completely shot, the course was incredibly hilly. So we knocked off another .75 or so (the race actually ended up around 13.2) and called it a day. To some extent I'm a bit concerned that running over a full minute per mile off my usual 1/2M pace left me wiped out, but I think the hills, humidity, and horrific sleep may have played a roll. Not sure, at any rate, the 19 miler is behind me.
| 