Other Notables From The Race

After I wrote up my race report, I forgot to call out a few other things I thought worth mentioning:

- I negative split the race as planned, running a 41:53 first half, followed by a 40:52 2nd half.  I think I might be most proud about accomplishing this.  Despite running slightly uphill and into a headwind on the way back, it shows that I was patient early on, but not slacking off.  You want a negative split, but if you have too much of one, you left too much out on the course.  I'd like to tighten the gap a bit, but I paced it based on my plan, so I can't fault myself there.  Next time, I'll plan for a closer negative split knowing better what I am capable of.

- I set a 10 mile PR in the race over the last 10 miles of the course.  My previous PR, also set during my last half marathon (must mean I need to actually race a 10 mile race, huh?) was 1:09:34.  And my standalone 10 mile race PR is a mere 1:11:17 - run nearly 2 years ago.  In this race, I covered the last 10 miles in 1:07:10.  So yea, a 2:24 PR in that distance...definitely need to step up my game on racing a 10 miler in the near future to better that!

- They released the official results and it appears that this race was pretty heavy with some solid runners.  Given the nice weather, I think a lot of people did exactly what I did and made sure the weather was going to cooperate.  And since there really aren't any other half marathons in the area this time of year, it seemed to bring out lots of people looking to get a solid race in.  57 people finished the race averaging 7:00/mile or faster, with the winner running a 5:27 avg pace...just a pedestrian jog if you ask me...

- I finished 42/469 and 15/68 in the 30-39 age group (or 7/37 if you consider the 30-34 age group).  In most local races, I tend to finish a lot higher in terms of overall percentage of racers (typically top 5-6%), but in this race I was right around top 9% overall .  Just shows how strong the depth of the field was. 

- When I wrote in my report that I was shocked at how many people went out hard, it now comes as no surprise, because a lot of them did run fast.  Even still, I'd estimate I passed about 40 people after the first 2 miles.  So you'd understand the shock I had in the race, when nearly 100 people were flying past me.  I was simply thinking no way there are that many people here running faster than me.  Sure enough, I was mostly right.  But still, lots of speedy racers out there!