Well, my ultimate goal was to average about 12:34 per mile for today's half marathon. I started off at about 11:04 a mile so I tried slowing down. Five minutes later I was still at 11:04 a mile. As I continued to run and continued thinking that I was slowing down, but my per mile pace kept getting faster. I was basically running negative splits without even meaning to. By the time I got to mile 10 I was averaging about 10:45 per mile. I slowed down the last three miles and finished with an average pace of 11:14 per mile. Still much faster than the 12:34 I thought was going to be my "push it" goal.
I had wanted to finish in under 2:44:40 and ended up coming in way under that. My official finish time was 2:28:43. My best time is about 2:20 back in 2009 when I was training for a full marathon. Before I set a goal to beat that time, I'll see how my training is going. However, I will set one goal now for the Columbus Half Marathon in October. That will be to finish in under 2:23. That would mean averaging about 11 minutes per mile for the whole 13.1.
The course for the Little Miami half marathon was just as advertised, shady the entire way. As a matter of fact, it was almost 4 miles in before I could even see the sky through all the trees. It was a very flat and fast course. The only down side was that it was run on a bike path and there were a lot of bikers, some of whom obviously had no clue about common courtesy of how to act when sharing a bike path with runners. Other bikers were courteous and careful when biking around the runners, but I really think it's safer to run on streets that have been closed down than it is to run around bikers on a bike path that is being shared...even in a scheduled/organized run.
My legs were REALLY sore when I finished today, which is the norm for running half marathons. They feel a little better now, which is good, because I am jumping right back in to training this week. My long run on Saturday will be six miles, and in eight weeks I will be back out on the race course.
Columbus has tremendous crowd support for the first half of their marathon, so I'm looking forward to running that morning.
I had wanted to finish in under 2:44:40 and ended up coming in way under that. My official finish time was 2:28:43. My best time is about 2:20 back in 2009 when I was training for a full marathon. Before I set a goal to beat that time, I'll see how my training is going. However, I will set one goal now for the Columbus Half Marathon in October. That will be to finish in under 2:23. That would mean averaging about 11 minutes per mile for the whole 13.1.
The course for the Little Miami half marathon was just as advertised, shady the entire way. As a matter of fact, it was almost 4 miles in before I could even see the sky through all the trees. It was a very flat and fast course. The only down side was that it was run on a bike path and there were a lot of bikers, some of whom obviously had no clue about common courtesy of how to act when sharing a bike path with runners. Other bikers were courteous and careful when biking around the runners, but I really think it's safer to run on streets that have been closed down than it is to run around bikers on a bike path that is being shared...even in a scheduled/organized run.
My legs were REALLY sore when I finished today, which is the norm for running half marathons. They feel a little better now, which is good, because I am jumping right back in to training this week. My long run on Saturday will be six miles, and in eight weeks I will be back out on the race course.
Columbus has tremendous crowd support for the first half of their marathon, so I'm looking forward to running that morning.
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