The weather was ideal (46* and overcast), the crowd was enthused and today I raced my first half marathon. My running partner and I emailed back and forth all week discussing our excitement, our strategy, our little aches and pains and finally what we expected as our finish time. Man! Were we dead on!

I felt good through mile 8.5 and then my muscles slowly began protesting what I was putting them through. I should have taken the hint when my one rp took some Gu and water. I skipped it and that was probably my downfall because soon after I bonked and just tried to hold on in the last few miles.

My splits looked like this:
1 – 9:00
2 – 8:43
3 – 8:21
4 – 8:31
5 – 8:35
6 – 8:42
7 – 8:32
8 – 8:33
9 – 8:58 (hills)
10- 8:40
11- 8:35
12- 8:25
13- 8:35
13.19- 1:35

The strategy was to start at 9:00 pace and slowly creep down around 8:30. I mean, we had a spreadsheet and everything with different scenarios. (Yeah, I know, total running geeks!) We held onto our strategy for the first two miles but then hovered more in the 8:30′s than in the 8:40′s like we’d planned. I was really spent in the last 2 miles which really bummed me out because I really wanted to kick it in at that point and finish strong in the stadium. Oh well, next time.

I’m still really happy with my finish, 1:53:54, for my very first half marathon. Oh, we figured we’d run in 1:53 and we did. Now we are determined to run 1:50 in Philly in September.

Final Placement Stats:
Field: 1103/2985 (37%)
Gender: 152/347 (22.7%)
Age Group: 60/258 (23.3%)