2011 DRC Half Marathon

     Today's race could not have come at a better time.  I had just underwent a huge role change at my job and my last day in the department I have worked for 10 years was this past Friday.  That was was weighing on me emotionally to me leaving that group as we are a pretty close family and I am so attached to a number of people there.  So preparing for this race took my mind off of that and the anxiety of starting my new position on Monday.  Saturday I volunteered to set up the race and part of that was to unpack about 20 boxes of medals.  Once I saw the medals, I was pretty giddy and ready to get the show on the road.

     I did very well I think Saturday fueling up with Pizza, Bagels, pasta.  I got a good night sleep which surprised me, because the night before all of my previous races I have barely got any sleep.  Since daylight savings time ended last night, that even gave me an extra hour to prepare.  Got to the race about 20 minutes before it started, due to traffic and having to wait on the shuttle to be transported.  I would have liked to have gotten there at least an hour before.

     Temps were in the 60s and overcast...people complained about the humidity, but I really didn't notice at all.  I guess all that training in the Texas 100 degree heat this summer made me numb to it.  I located 2 people from my pace group and we decided to try to stick together for as long as we could.  I was wondering if I would be able to keep up.  I had no idea it would be the other way around.  

     The first couple miles was weaving in and out of traffic.  We came up on another person from our pace group.  She and a friend of hers joined us, so we had a pretty good group put together.  We kept it at about an 8:55 pace for the first 4-5 miles then started hitting the hilly parts of the course.  My strategy was to tackle the upside of hills carefully, but turn it up a notch on the downside.  Around mile 6 I noticed we lost one of our members.  Then at mile 7 or 8 I lost the other two.  I found out after the race that it was due to cramps and the humidity which seemed to have little or no effect on me.  

     I was feeling good and I was about to take advantage of it.  Every hill I came to, I did exactly as planned, ran at slight slower than marathon pace up the hill, but ran faster than marathon pace down it.  I latched on to a couple runners who were running my pace along the way which helped as well.  The whole time I was worried that I was going too fast and was in fear of crashing.  But it never happened.  Around mile 11 on my ipod the old school hip hop song "How Ya Like Me Now" by Kool Moe Dee popped on.  It starts out with a sample of "The Night Train" by James Brown.  I thought that was pretty funny and actually gave me a little bit more push.  The last mile my legs started to tire a bit, but I was still good and was able to keep my pace.  I found myself looking for guys in my age group to make sure I passed by them for a better ranking  LOL.  I finished with a time of 01:55:23 and a pace of 8:46.  642 out of 2716 overall and 84th out of 237 in my age group.  I never would imagine that I would be the only runner in my pace group who would finish with the target time that we all trained for.  I just wonder how I would have done if the humidity that I didn't even notice wasn't there.  

     So that's one half down and two more to go before the end of the year.  Again, per my last blog I credit this to the group running I have been doing. I don't think I would have accomplished this if I were still running solo.