2008 3M Half Marathon

Today was my favorite race of the entire year. My body wasn't ready to run fast today, but I ran anyway and had a great time. I met Jay, Alex, Anne, Brian, and Michael at RunTex to ride up to the top. We did a little warm up with the group and then headed back to the truck to get ready for the run and dump off our gear bags. I got to the corral late and was pretty far back in the mix. I lined up with Jay and Anne and lost both of them after the start. I got stuck in a major log jam and was running near 9:00 pace. I finally got through the mess and kicked it into gear. I passed Carrie on the 183 frontage road. She was in the middle of a 23 miler and had already run 10 miles prior to the start. I chatted for a bit and then took off. I felt good, but didn't want to go out too fast and actually feel like crap at the end of a half marathon. I picked it up through the down hill sections, crossed MoPac and then was just trying to maintain a sub 8:00 pace. Most of my splits were sub 8:00 except when we headed east across 53rd/North Loop. I had 3 miles in a row in the 8:00-8:12 range. Once we got onto Duval, I decided to see what my legs had left. I ran 7:47, 7:42, and 7:22 for the last 3 miles. Those were way off my 7:11 overall pace last year, but for the shape that I am in I was very happy to have that much left in the tank. G was yelling for me to pass another Gazelle and I caught him and picked off a few more folks as well into the chute.

I said hi to a few folks and then headed over to get my clothes and get warm. I hung out with Jay and Alex for awhile and then we walked back to RunTex. It was a great day and I really enjoyed my run.

Stats - 13.1 Miles/1:43:30/7:54 pace
AHR - 149
MHR - 172