As we're closing in my first tri of the season and my "A" race in the next 6 weeks I felt like I needed a little something to do a little mindset training. I'm not sure if my coach was too excited about it but he put on the brave face and said go for it.
I wasn't exactly racing on fresh legs having done a solid 85 mile ride the day before and a couple of bigger volume and intensity weeks prior.
The plan was pretty simple don't kill myself, keep my eye on the prize (IMCDA) and run negative splits. Pretty simple guidelines.
The Kirkland Half Marathon is a fairly hilly endeavor. The first few miles are a mix of flat and short (400 meter max) steep hills. The course then flattens out for a couple miles before a gradual climb for a couple miles then two miles of descent (fairly steep) before flattening out for a few miles then a mix of uphill and downhills before finally flattening out for the final mile.
The morning of the race it was in the mid 40's, overcast and breezy. I did my normal pre-race warmup of 20 minutes of jogging, active stretching and a few build-ups to get warmed up and headed to the start line. It was pretty funny they had pacing groups so up by the start line there where just a handful of runners and none of the normal jockeying for position everyone had plenty of room. Then the air horn and we were off.
I headed out at a what felt like a very conservative pace as I passed the first mile marker and checked my watch I pretty much freaked.... 5:39 was the split with a hill. Either I'm in much better shape than I thought or it could be a long day. When I hit the second mile marker I realized that the first mile marker was short of the mile as I had gone through 2 miles in 13:16 so I was just under 6:40 average mile pace.
I continued to comfortably reel off conservative mile splits; 6:48, 6:44, 6:38, 6:42 through six miles in just over 40 minutes. As I passed the halfway point I started to pick-up the pace. Through the first half I was in no mans land there were three small groups well up the road ahead of me and then a couple of singles within about 200 yards ahead. The next runners where a couple hundred yards behind me. Just before halfway I started to close on the next runner who had been holding about 50 meters in front of me and as we hit a slight incline in the road I cruised by him and within a minute I couldn't hear his foot strikes behind me any longer.
The next few miles I focused on staying relaxed as there was a long downhill section and I didn't want to push and blow out the quads (plus I'm not that fast a downhill runner). Funny enough I had been closing on the next couple runners ahead of me and continuing to distance myself from the guy I had passed just before halfway but after the downhill section the runners in front of me had put back on the distance I had closed the guy behind me had gained on me. I was glad to be on the flats.
I continued to focus on my form, eyes up the road, good knee lift, keeping the body upright and keeping my arms and shoulders relaxed. This translated into a good pace with 6:30, 6:20 and then we hit the hills again. These suckers are cruel steep but I was happy to be holding sub 6:40's. I had finally closed to within 50 meters of the next runner ahead of me with just over a mile to go I really focused on catching him. With just about a half mile to go I passed another runner who had been caught and then quickly passed the guy I had been chasing, passing him with about 600 meters to go and he picked up the chase. He passed me back just about 100 meters from the finish and I let him go. I finished up with a sub 6:00 minute mile to finish in 1:25:27.
I finished in 10th place overall and 2nd in my age group. Not a bad effort for running on tired legs and keeping to my coaches instructions.
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