Earlier this year, I had plans to run the 3M half marathon for the 4th time. It's a mostly downhill race and very fast, and I trained hard for 3 months to run it at 1:31 pace. This was the most consistent that I've ever been in following a training plan, and while I skipped some of the easy runs, I did almost all of the hard runs (3 per week) and long runs (1 per week). (Without getting an injury! Yay!!)
And then, the week before the race, I came down with the flu (even though I'd gotten a flu shot!) and I was so exhausted that I could barely walk or stand up for longer than 30 minutes at a time on race day, much less run. ARRRGH. I was pretty disappointed (okay, very disappointed) for a couple of days, and then I got over it and signed up for the Austin half marathon, which was about 4 weeks later. The only difference is that the 3M course is flat and gradual downhill, with one short but steep hill, and the Austin half marathon course is hilly the entire way! I knew I wasn't going to get a personal best, but I was going to try to do my best anyway. My goal was to finish under 1:40, but aim for 1:37 or faster.
The morning of the race, I drove downtown with a friend who was also running the half marathon -- which was awesome since she used to work downtown and knew exactly where to park and where the race started. We parked away from the crowds, and only a couple of blocks from the finish line, so we'd be able to leave downtown before the crowds. We walked to the start line and lined up just in time for the national anthem.
The race started and the hills started almost right away! The first 1/2 mile or so was flat, but then the first couple of short, rolling hills started, and it was all downhill (figuratively, not literally!) from there. :-) I took the first few miles very easy since I knew that miles 3-6 were one big uphill climb and I wanted to make it to the 10k mark with some energy left for the last half of the race. Thankfully, miles 6-9 were mostly downhill! I don't know what my splits were since I missed some of the mile markers, I do remember that I went through the first 5k around 23 minutes and my time at mile 10 was 1:16:xx.
It was around mile 10 that the half marathoners split off from the marathoners, and I was ecstatic that the big hills were over (or so I thought!) and only had another 5k left to run. But then, if I'd looked at the entire elevation map of the course (which I didn't!) I would have noticed the several short, but steep hills clustered between miles 10-12. The hill at mile 11.5 or so was particularly steep and my body gave me the choice of 1) walking or 2) passing out. I chose the former. ;-)
I finished the race in 1:41:49, which is 7:44 pace. I didn't come close to my 3M goal of 1:31, but I did run the flat parts of the race around 7:00-7:10 pace, even at the end when my legs were just done.
Next up, a grassy, rolling hill 5k, and a flat 10 mile race. No more big hills for me any time soon!
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