I was going to skip picking up registration before the race, but from where I dropped off my son to the packet pickup location,the driving distance was an auspicious 26.2 miles away. This is not a great race for cost, swag or nutrition: $90-100 for just a running race, with cotton t-shirts instead of technical shirts before the race and unripe bananas after it. I mean, come on, some bagels for the athletes?
Anyway, this was my second time doing this Half Marathon. Last year, i did it in 1:37, and this year I wanted to do a minute faster from my best HM in the spring – the very hilly Sleepy Hollow, in 1:36, or 7:20 min/mile. To do 1:35 would require 7:15 minute miles. Ambitious, but plausible.
The challenge is pacing this course, not steeply hilly, but net downhill along the Bronx River Parkway for the first half from White Plains to Scarsdale, and net uphill for the second half. So, race plan was to run the first half in z2 to low z3 (heart rate of 141-154 bpm), with the first mile at 7:36 and the rest of the race at 7:15 to 7:20 – kicking up and ignoring the heart rate for the second half, keep up the same pace despite the incline. My other, conflicting goal was to “enjoy” the race, to have fun for the first 10 miles, or at least to not be miserable for the entire 13.1 like I was last year (when i started in the third row and took my pace from capital R Runners, rather than choose my own pace). This time, I was going to run MY race, not someone else’s.
So, I started in the 6th row, and HONNNK! Watch the masters tear out ahead. Despite my zen attitude, did the first half of mile 1 at 6:45 (!), slowed down to finish it in 7:32, and even if my HR spiked to the high end of z3 now and then as we went up some hills on the first half (i said “net” downhill, right?), it was surprisingly comfortable when i broke 7:12 on mile 2, 7:22 for miles 3 and 4, but 7:30ish for 5 and 6. I was at a deficit already, but feeling good. Along that first half, I ran with Mary Beth, a short older woman I had met last year at the same race and who was wearing the Sleepy Hollow HM shirt (kindred spirit) and we are on the exact same pace, and she says don’t let me slow you down, and I say this is actually a little too fast, I’m going to slow down, I enjoy your company but I am running MY race.
So as we round the turn to go back, I kick it up, and starting counting how many I can pass. Tall guy in white shirt and yellow cap stays exactly a block ahead for 5 miles, and I am trying hard to go fast, faster, but these long loping hills resist and I can scarcely crack 7:40s. I look at my watch with two miles to go and I’m at 1:22, there’s no way I can do 2.1 miles in 13 or even 14 minutes, and I run as hard as I can but I can’t get the turnover, and at least I pass the tall guy in the white shirt but i cannot catch the TIME I am shooting for and there’s that annoying hairpin turn before doubling back to the finish line and I am DONE with the race, DONE with the 2014 season, Done. Done. Done.
At 1:38:13.
Oh, well. Not the time i wanted, a minute SLOWER than my goal, but (here’s the kicker): i managed my second goal, to enjoy most of the race. And maybe it was unreasonable to expect I could both run with less than everything I’ve got and still run faster. And the excuses, it seems to me, make sense: not that the weather was tough, or my shoes were bad, or the sun got in my eyes. More like the reality that this was after a summer of five triathlons, including a 70.3; that I had been tapering for 2 weeks after my last Olympic; that I had missed my final 10-mile run because I was getting over a cold; and that in the spring, when I had trained for Quassy and ignored the oncoming cold, I had become too sick to race. So, I had made choices, not excuses, and even if the magic of adrenaline and other competitors makes every race outcome a total surprise to me (how did I DO that?!) it’s not magic and not a surprise that I have to work hard to race faster. And I will.
Next year.
-Mark