I basically ran exactly what I expected I would. This is such a tough course and there is just no magic wand that can make you run fast when you haven't really been putting in the work. A good lesson for me.
I started with Jen behind Kassi & Devra. Our plan was to run conservatively and stay together as long possible (it's an insanely boring course!) Our first 2 miles were 6:50's and then I fell into a rythmn and pulled ahead. Miles 3-10 I maintained a fairly consistent 6:35 pace. I felt okay but the pace definitely felt kind of forced. It is hard to mentally hold it together on this course....there were only 90 people registered for the half this year and only 5 people in front of me. I could see Devra up ahead which really helped.
Mile 10.5 is when you enter the fields and things get really hard. I just tried to hold it together and looked forward to the sweet downhill mile to finish the race. The course was not marked well and the person that was supposed to be telling people to turn at mile 12 was not there....so I just followed the 5kers and ended up cutting .4 short! Jen tried to yell at me but I was too far ahead to hear her. I realized when I hit mile 13 marker and my garmin said 12.5 that something was majorly wrong but at that point I didn't know what to do so I just kind of jogged into the finish. What a mess....I was so mad! Mostly just mad at myself for not knowing the course better (I've ran it 3 times) and for following 5kers.
They ended up giving me a 5 min penalty which put my time at 1:29:51 and 4th place overall behind Jen. Realistically I think it would have taken me about 3 or less min to run the .4 and my time would have been 1:27:5X but who really knows. Ugh so frustrating! I was mad at myself for like 2 hours afterwards and then just realized it didn't really matter and I still got a solid workout in. Also I was not upset with the race at all....It is 100% my fault for not knowing the course. Although the 5 min penalty was probably a bit steep it was much better than being DQ'd from the standings. 5th place was 17 min behind the first 4 so that would have been incredibly frustrating if they would have thrown me out of the top 5.
Complicated results aside it was a fun race and a good workout for me. I'm ready to take a break from distance and refocus on the 5k/10k races for the rest of the year. I am not even entertaining the idea of a fall marathon and am really excited to see what I am capable of with some real training in the shorter races. | 