Day 64: Sunday, January 24th, 2010

RACE DAY

I didn't really know what to expect in my first half-marathon race, and had no idea what pace I should run. When I started training at the end of November, my goal was to break 1:23:00 (6:20/mile), but it had become clear that there was no way that was going to happen for this race. I was just as likely to set a new world record, so I decided that I would take this race as a training run - an opportunity to set a benchmark for myself, hopefully without blowing up. I picked 7:30/mile as my pace for the first mile or two and decided to reassess the situation after that.

Unfortunately, because I showed up pretty late as I didn't want to be standing around in the cold, I ended up getting stuck near the back of the corral and found myself "running" with the 10:00/mile pacers. Not ideal when there are 5,000 other runners and no where to pass except outside the race course (and on the outside of all the turns). I'm not sure how much distance it added to my run, but I was having too much fun passing people to really notice. 7:30s felt really easy so I decided to try and negative split each mile to the end, really dropping the hammer after mile 7. Looking back on my splits, that's not exactly what happened, but the second half of my race was faster than the first half so overall I'm very satisfied. I'm really looking forward to the NYC Half-Marathon in March.

Distance: 13.1 Miles, 21.1 Kilometers
Date/Time: Jan. 24, 2010, 8:00 a.m.
Location: Central Park, NYC
Weather: 37 deg., 76% humidity, wind 5 mph.

Finish Time: 1:34:33
Pace/Mile: 7:13
Overall Place: 607
Gender Place: 539
Age Place: 110

I ran with RunKeeper, but the pacing and distance was a bit off. Still, it give a general overview of elevation and pacing changes throughout the race. For details, click on the link in the upper left hand corner: