» Photos from the race on flickr.

Two days ago I ran the Earth Day Half Marathon here in St. Cloud. Being the first time racing since leaving Alaska and moving to Minnesota last summer, I had high hopes and a solid amount of training leading up to the race. I was shooting to better my previous half marathon best of 1:47:55 by about 5 minutes or more. The weather was perfect on Saturday and I was feeling good, so I showed up to campus feeling confident and mostly relaxed.

I was definitely anxious to get started, but was able to trust in all the good training I’ve done over the last several months. This is by far the best shape I’ve been in this early in the running season since getting back into running about five years ago. Sarah and I made our way to campus with plenty of time for me to warm up and meander through the crowd and find my pace group. My goal initially was around 1:43, which means my pace would have needed to be about 7:50/mile. I found the 7:38/mile pacer near the start and decided to see how it felt to hang with him for awhile. This was 12 seconds per mile ahead of my goal pace, slightly aggressive, but not unreasonable. So I lined up about 10 yards behind him with his easy to spot blue sign displaying the pace and got ready to go. It was cool to be hanging out there with the big crowd of runners underneath the overpass I’ve driven under so many times when bringing Sarah to work or leaving campus on the way home.

The gun went KAPOW and it was on! I’ve never ran a race with an actual human pacer like this before, so it was nice to have him ahead of me to help keep my race-start adrenaline in check. Without the pacer I surely would have started faster than I should have, but not this time. I just went out comfortably and enjoyed the energy of all the surrounding runners during that first couple of crowded miles. With the adrenaline, 7:38/mile felt easily for quite awhile, but then it started to feel right. After a couple miles I was just comfortable and did not feel I was straining to keep near my pacer. So that’s what I did, I cruised along with the pacer around 10-30 yards ahead of me, occasionally checking my Garmin to make sure he wasn’t an evil pacing impostor put there to mislead a whole bunch of running suckers. Each time I looked at my Garmin everything checked out, so I began to trust my guy.

I saw Sarah four times over the first 6 miles and through that entire stretch I had no problems at all. It was always fun to see her and hear her cheers. There were lots of encouraging people throughout the race and I wouldn’t expect anything less from Minnesotans. I slowed down for the water stops and had a few swallows of water or Gatorade each time, then I’d pick it up and gradually catch back up to my pace group. I was beginning to think I had a shot at breaking 1:40, but knew I had a lot of challenging running ahead of me.

Between miles 6 and 9 I knew I was working. I had left my heart-rate monitor at home (on purpose), so I was using my breathing and everything else as a guide. There were some moments where I acknowledged I was pushing a little harder than was prudent, so I checked over my stride, made sure everything was still smooth and comfortable, and backed off just enough to keep myself in line. There were a couple hills that got me, especially one around mile 10 that made me question if I had been pushing too hard. After getting over the hill and settling back down I realized all was still fine and I had enough left and the guts to finish strong even if it hurt.

Somewhere over the last three miles and with the help of those two big hills, my pacer got away from me. I wasn’t too concerned as I knew I was still very much headed for a PR, but I was still hoping to reel the pacer back in. I tried to pick it up when I had about 1.5 miles left, but I did not have a ton left in the tank. I was able to get my pace consistently down around 7:30 and with a half mile left I really tried to pour it on, but I couldn’t quite catch the pacer. My official finish time was 1:40:11, which put me at 29 out of 151 runners in the men’s 30-34 division. There’s a lot of serious runners in this group so I feel encouraged— this was also the largest of the men’s divisions. For my gender I was 130 out of 636 and overall I was 165 out of 1496.

I’m excited for what comes next: more marathon training heading into the June 13th Lake Placid Marathon. And hopefully a few more races around here this summer, maybe if Lake Placid goes well I’ll shoot for a more challenging trail marathon up north in the latter part of the summer or early fall. I still need to pick one. I’m thoroughly enjoying running right now. I feel like I’ve turned a corner recently and the horizon seems broader than ever before!

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