This morning I ran the Shamrock'n Half Marathon. It was my eighth half-marathon overall and the second which had periods of rain and wind. I think this one was worse than the other as my final 35 minutes were spent running into a headwind with a cold drizzle hitting my face. I under-dressed for the weather and was pretty miserable at the end of the run.
The run started in the rain, and my plan for the first mile was not to run past the 1:50 pace runner. I succeeded on that goal, however, I think the pacer was running ahead of pace as I finished the first mile in 8:12 while a 1:50 pace is 8:23/mile. My pace evened out from there, and I finished miles two through nine within the range of 8:28 to 8:43. I started to wear out in the middle of the tenth mile, took my second gel pack hoping to hit a water station soon, didn't, and ended up with a bit of a cramp. I started to slow down, and then the wind and rain hit. The tenth mile I finished in 8:53, and then my eleventh through thirteenth miles were each finished in roughly 9:13. I had a bit of a kick left to get to the finish (at the 7:35/mile pace). Here's my final result:
Based on my Sac Beer Week 5K time from two weeks ago, the pace calculator from Runner's World predicted I'd finish in 1:54:14. I beat that by a couple seconds. Had the conditions been different, I might have been able to beat 1:53:00. I had been hoping to beat my 2015 Urban Cow time of 1:52:22, but realistically, I need to lose a few pounds to challenge that.
I'm hoping to get in another half before summer, but we'll see if that works with my schedule. First, I think I need to put some effort into dropping 10-15 pounds.
