This was the most awesome half marathon I have ever run. I thought my breaking the 2 hour mark less than a year ago was great. Then just 6 months ago, I surprised myself with a 1:52 finish time and 8:30 pace. That was on a flat-as-pancake course and perfect temps. I knew that would probably be an unbeatable PR.Fast forward to the Montgomery Half Marathon this weekend. I was more than prepared after going through the last 6 months of very effective marathon training. With this being my first race with cool race temps since last April, I knew I would beat my last half marathon PR, but only expected it by a couple of minutes. My only real goal was to finish around 1:49. However, this race was much different from all my previous half marathons. This one had hills! All the others were flat, flat, flat. I expected a PR, but knew I was running a tougher course. Also, I didn't plan for this to be an "A" race. Last week was a 49 mile training week with a 20 mile long run, and this race week started with a hard 12 miler on Monday. Basically, I am training for marathons and don't really taper for the half.
The race began and off we went up a 1.5 mile hill. It wasn't steep by any means, but it was still uphill. By Mile 4, I was running around an 8:00 pace and the cool temps were making me feel really, really good about that pace. With my goal pace being 8:19, I was cruising along, feeling good, and was putting time in the bank in case things got worse. I am not saying I was purposely running faster and then suffer a slow down later on. I was running faster and feeling great! By Mile 7, I was thinking this could be an amazing finish time. Still half way to go, I continued on. I visualized myself being in one of my tougher workouts called Step-Up Intervals where you run a relatively easy 6 miles and then a hard 7 miles after that. I told myself, "treat this like you just started the step-ups". I wasn't fatigued by any means, just cruising along, convincing myself this is not a dream. My average pace was now around 7:55. I am thinking...."Am I crazy?".
The race was full of small up and down hills...until Mile 10. I looked up "Oh my gosh!". It wasn't a long hill, but it was a potential heartbreak hill for sure. My decision: "charge the hill". I treated it like one of my hill workouts and went right up it, passing a number of people. While it took me a couple of miles to recover from that hill, I never skipped a beat on my average pace.
The greatest thing about this race was the finish across the perfectly manicured baseball field, complete with all the hooplah and fanfare. At that point, I was in heaven. I felt great. I had run well and worked the last miles effectively. But the best thing was that I felt that I could have run much longer at that pace with no problem. At the finish, my watch time was 1:41:41 which was also the official time. The course was a little short for some reason, maybe 2/10 mile short, so I feel compelled to use my Garmin pace and add a little time to make it a full 13.1 for my personal remembrance of this day. So, I call it a finish time of 1:43 and an average pace of 7:52. Awesome! Did I beat my start-of-race goal of 1:49? I would say so! Did I PR by 8 or 9 minutes? Yep! Am I a bit excited? You betcha!
As shown in the photo, I sat down in the stadium to relish the moment and send a few text messages and tweets to whoever would listen. I also met two special Daily Mile / Twitter people: James K (alroadrunn3r) and Drew T (dtrachy). So you see, this was an awesome day!