Half Marathon Training Run

I signed up for the half marathon today on Saturday. I wandered around the expo with the intent of buying the same pair of shoes that I'm currently running in (i.e. last years model). I found someone that was selling them but not wanting to lug around a box, i decided to buy them after I was finished browsing. This was a bad idea, as I ended up buying two pairs of shorts, including a race ready pair, a running jacket and pair of socks that are "specifically designed socks to provide advanced performance for regular and extreme sports." Anyhow after spending way too much money on clothing, I ended up not buying the shoes which was the only thing I had intended on buying! Oh well!

Well I arrived kinda late to the start, that is, I had actually pulled onto the freeway offramp 45 minutes before the gun sounded, but unfortunately with the mass of cars trying to converge at the same spot, it ended up taking me 40 minutes to travel about 1km into the parking lot. I dropped off my bag and decided to head to the portta potties. I was in there when the gun went off. I had decided to do this as a long run, so it didn't really matter if i was late, so I took my time getting to the start line. It was about 10 minutes from the start of the race to when I actually crossed the start line.

My plan was to try and start off at my long run pace and slowly speed up to about 8 min/miles which is what Pfitz suggests should be the fast end of my long runs for a 3:10 marathon finish. My hope was to get some data to see how I improve over the summer.

Starting right at the back with lots of slower people proved to be quite the confidence booster as I ended passing lots of people throughout the whole race.

Lap	Time	Lap Time	Pace (min/mi)	HR Avg
1	0:10:19	10:19.1	08:18.2	164
2	0:15:22	05:03.3	08:08.1	165
3	0:24:56	09:33.7	07:41.6	166
4	0:29:56	04:59.9	08:02.6	169
5	0:34:45	04:49.0	07:45.1	171
6	0:39:37	04:52.1	07:50.1	172
7	0:44:28	04:50.6	07:47.7	174
8	0:49:39	05:11.7	08:21.6	176
9	0:54:03	04:23.2	07:03.6	174
10	0:59:04	05:01.0	08:04.4	171
11	1:03:47	04:43.8	07:36.7	171
12	1:08:36	04:48.5	07:44.3	172
13	1:13:18	04:41.8	07:33.5	175
14	1:18:00	04:42.1	07:34.0	174
15	1:22:54	04:53.9	07:53.0	174
16	1:27:46	04:52.5	07:50.7	176
17	1:32:36	04:49.3	07:45.6	176
18	1:37:07	04:31.7	07:17.3	182
19	1:41:47	04:39.7	07:30.1	182

The course was marked in km and I missed the 1 and 4 km markers so laps 1 and 3 are actually 2 km each. Laps 8 and 9 are a bit screwy since I forgot to hit the lap button till I had passed the marker so 8 is bit long and 9 is a bit short. The laps were generally okay though they were all a bit fast. The knee was holding up fine so I tried to do the last two km at LT pace. Final time of 1:42:09 chip time.

Temperature was cool and there was very little wind. It was kind of a bummer though as I had planned on trying to BQ at this marathon and the weather was almost perfect marathoning weather. Hopefully this stuff will be around come marathon day in the fall.