Normally I wouldn’t post a running race report, but since this was a “comeback race” for me, I had a lot to learn from this.
The race: Capital City Half Marathon in Olympia, WA, May 15. It rained all night, not the fine drizzle we often get, but a real monsoon gully-washer type, with 1’ in the six hours from 7 PM on, then it kept going. All told, we got as much rain in this 48 hour period as we usually get the whole month of May. It became lighter by morning, but still kept going throughout the race, making puddles everywhere. Luckily, the temp was 52F with no wind. Actually perfect for running hard, but not so good for warming up, cooling down, and standing around before and after the race.
I’ve done this race twice before, in 04 & 05. I went 1:34 +/- each time before. More recently, on a hillier in Tacoma, my times (09 & 10)1:37 +/-.
I had two main goals for this event. First, I wanted to run under 1:38, based on my current fitness testing (VDOT), training times, and my estimate of 0.5% dropoff per year d/t aging. That was based on my expectations having raced here before. But I discovered part way thru the course was different, a bit hillier than before; had I known that, 1:40 would have been my goal. Luckily, I didn’t know about the difference until I was in the middle of the race! Second, I wanted to see if I still had the capacity to push myself in the middle and end of a real race, something I’ve worried about since my bike accident last Sept, whether I still had my competitive drive in race conditions.
Result: 1:37.21. 59/1250 racers, 45/460 men. To help me judge what this time meant (since I hadn’t done the course before), I looked to two other racers who are 1 and 3 years my junior, and who are both consistent racers (life-long runners) and close to my times. One, Tim, is unquestionably faster than I am, e.g., in March we were in a 5K together, and he went 90 seconds faster, his usual spread over the past 7 years. As the distance gets longer, I get (relatively) closer to him, but still, he’s still usually been 1-4 minutes faster than me for a half marathon.
At the start, he was set up near me, and took off in the mild melee of this 1250 person race a little faster than me – par for the course, I figured. He was wearing a bright yellow vest, easy to see, and slowly after the first long hill, I began to reel him in between miles 4-8. I easily pulled ahead both on the downhill. By the start of the second long uphill, he pulled back up behind me, as I was walking the aid stations (I still can’t swallow while running without coughing). I crept back up to him by a quarter of the way up. Then, keeping my effort level high, but not over the redline, I slowly started pulling away. I figured I should keep pushing the hill a little, because the race finishes with a mile downhill, and with that and his natural speed advantage over me, there was no way could I beat him unless I was ahead before then. Apparently my comptertitive drive had started to kick in again. We would see if I both hold the hard pace uphill, and still have enough left to stick with his kick in the last mile.
That plan worked well until I found mile 12 I didn’t have any punch left. My last mile was 7:19, which sounds OK (my pace for the race was 7:25), but the other two races I was more like 6:30-6:40 for that section. He ended up beating my by 40 seconds, all in that last mile. Oh well, it’s closer than I’ve ever been to him in any race before. Wait’ll next year!
The other guy I was watching out for, Stan, is normally about my speed, +/- 60 seconds. He also started near me, about one row behind. Usually, he also goes out faster, so I expected him to go by me within the first mile. He would be easy to spot, as he’s tall, lean, and was wearing pink tights. I never saw him pass me, and he ended up finishing 4 minutes behind me.
Both of these guys had run the Tacoma City Half Marathon two weeks, Tim in 1:35 (1-2 minutes faster than my times from 09 and 10), and Stan in 1:39. So: they seem to be slowing down more than I as we get older.
My conclusion is: I haven’t lost a step running, which means I’ll be able to focus a bit more on my biking and a lot more on my swimming over the next 3 weeks in my tri training camp leading into IM CDA. I know I’ve lost 10% in my swim (the pace clock on the wall does not lie), and I still haven’t done a ride longer than 4 hours yet. My next test will be that IM, my goal being to prove to myself I’m as fit as I was 9 months ago, even if my swimming has aged (at least) 10 years during that time.