Funny how God seems to hate New York City half marathons. Bronx was hot and humid, and really took a lot of some people. The New York City Half in August had rain. And Grete's yesterday involved a deluge for about the 15 minutes until the horn sounded and then steady rain throughout. I was running a little behind for the start thanks to the need to spend extra time on packing dry clothes (individual garbage bags for various items inside my travel bag; travel bag inside a garbage bag of its own), and therefore arrived right as the heavens went from a steady rain to a pour at 8:30. I overheard several people announcing they were going home and I considered it when I realized it was too wet for the waterproof bandages I use for my nipples. Finally, after working my way up toward the 7 min./mile crowd I heard Grete Waltz announce that, "This isn't Norwegian weather!" and then blow the horn. I started moving toward the line and could hear my shoes squishing from the amount of water they'd absorbed.
Fortunately, by the quarter mile the rain let up to just steady. Unfortunately, my shoes felt like lead weights and, despite the slackened downpour, I picked up more shoe-water-weight from puddles along the course. C'est la vie. I passed a number of Flyers through the first mile and the universal opinion of the race was, "This sucks." When we hit the first mile marker, although I felt like I was going slow, it was 6:45. Perfect. That's almost target and target should feel slow at mile one. And if I'm hitting pace and it feels slow given the conditions, that bodes well for the marathon no matter how this F.U.B.A.R. of a race goes.
The next few miles, I focused on consistency, and hit about 6:35-6:45 for every mile until 9. Why 9? Well, Grete's course was two loops of Central Park, and at 9 miles we were back in the West side hills approaching Harlem hill at mile 10. Miles 9-11 were spent dealing with (and about a mile recovering from) these hills. Although I'd powered through them on the first lap without losing pace, on the second time through the legs no longer had that kind of strength and this stretch stole about 20s/mile. Just didn't have it to give. After hitting the top of the climbs and getting my legs back under me, I managed to get back on race pace and regained a little of the lost time over the last 2.1 miles. During the last mile or so, I raced a chick from the Moving Comfort Club, whom I talked to briefly after the race with her boyfriend. He'd been madly ringing a cowbell as we ran by to announce the, ahem, "bell lap."
All in all, this was a success. (Even if I didn't hit my "secret" 1:27:xx target.) A nearly 4 minute P.R. of 1:28:32, my first sub-1:30 Half, and a predicted marathon finish of 3:04-3:06(depending on the calculator). I'm going to assume that 3:05's still a legit goal with the taper and will tweak my A-C schedule over the taper, but right now I have one more week of hard training to go and sore hamstrings to nurse through it. I'm hopeful though, that Grete's bought me some weather Karma for MCM.
Finally, one thing that was a little odd, for me at least, about this race was the amount of time I spent running solo between groups. The race had about 4200 runners and normally in races that size I almost always have a pack to latch onto. I haven't spent so much solo time in a race since . . . High School cross country??? I'd forgotten how much harder it is to hold the pace without targets and how draining it can be to try to catch the group ahead. Well, moving on, if this becomes a regular race occurrence I'll have to dwell on it, but for this race I'll assume it was the rain.
Week in Review
| Monday | Rest | -- | -- |
| Tuesday | 8.15 miles | 1:01:04 | 7:30/mile w/5X600 |
| Wednesday | 11.25 miles | 1:28:30 | 7:52/mile |
| Thursday | 6.1 miles | 46:56 | 7:42/mile |
| Friday | Rest | -- | -- |
| Saturday | 3.11 miles | ???? | 8:XX/mile |
| Sunday | 13.11 miles | 1:28:32 | 6:45/mile |
| Total | 41.7 Miles | -- | -- |
