PR or PW?

Well, it depends how you look at it.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I was planning to run the Denver Half Marathon this past Sunday, that I’ve had a few injuries this year that have kept me from training as hard or as much as I would have liked, and that my only real goal for this race was to finish the race feeling healthy. I did have it in the back of my mind though that I wasn’t going to be able to finish much under 2:30 because I was planning to run/walk the race and I was run/walking about 11 minute miles in the few longer training runs I had prior to the race. So as not to keep those with short attention spans in suspense, I did end up finishing healthy, and my time was quite a bit better than I had guessed it would be. So all in all, I’d count the race as a success.

The morning of the race was cool–probably in the mid-40s–but it was predicted to get into the low 80s that day. So I started the race wearing a fleece that I’d bought the day before for about $2 at the thrift store knowing that I’d toss it to the side in the first mile, with a short sleeve shirt and some Zensah arm sleeves under that. I also parked myself way towards the back of the start, which meant that it took me what I guessed was about 2 minutes to cross the start line. Yes, I said guessed. That’s right, I made the rookie mistake of forgetting to wear either a watch or my Garmin, which I hadn’t realized until we were already halfway to the race. This made it difficult to execute my race plan of doing a 4/1 run/walk ratio, but I figured I would try to walk for a bit every half mile or so and just see how things went.

This plan went pretty well through mile 7 or so despite that fact that it felt really odd not having a solid idea of what pace I was running at, other than the clock at about mile 5 where I estimated I was running about a 10:15 pace. However, for some reason I didn’t see the mile marker at mile 8 so I missed a couple of walk breaks between about miles 7.5 and mile 9, which I should have realized because I remember thinking to myself “this is the longest mile EVER”! I was still feeling pretty good though, so I stuck with the ‘walk a few seconds every half mile or so’ plan.

Somewhere between miles 11 and 12, the marathoners and half marathoners parted ways. I was feeling a bit tired by then and very glad that I wasn’t running the marathon, but was happy that I hadn’t had any pain or any real problems at all other than a bit of a hot spot under my left forefoot, so I knew I was going to finish. Shortly after that, I saw my husband and heard him cheering for me, which was a huge boost. I decided not to do any walking in the last mile and just ran it in, giving me a clock time of 2:12:05.

Other stats: Actual time: 2:09:55, 2052 out of 4480 participants, 1024 out of 2834 women, 125 out of 367 in my age group. This was a personal worst time for me by over 10 minutes, and over 20 minutes slower than my PR. However, since I hadn’t done this race before, it was a course PR for me (weak, I know, but it gives me something to shoot for next time).

All in all, I felt pretty good about this race and was glad I did it even though I knew I wasn’t at my best. Hope you all are enjoying your fall races!

Related posts:

1. Race Day Magic at the Colfax Half
2. Colfax Half Marathon Goals

Tagged as: half marathon, race