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Indianapolis Monumental: Half!
Nov. 7th, 2010 04:18 pmThis weekend we headed to Indianapolis for the Half!
Upshot: we were pretty fast!
Alex: 1:33:56 (that's 7:11 minute/mile pace), for a new PR!
Lindsey: 2:06:31: For her first half, so it's necessarily a new PR! (but it's much faster than half of her previous marathon best.)
I had a really good race. We were staying at a hotel close to the starting line, and also thankfully close to packet pickup, convenient because we had to get our numbers and chips on the morning-of. So we showed up with time to spare before the race started, and were able to find good places to start from.
That's an important strategy point -- it's a danger, in road races, that you'll start too far back from the starting line. Your personal clock doesn't start until you actually cross the line (there's a little RFID chip on your shoe), but you don't want to be behind a wall of slower runners at the beginning of the race, and even more than that, you want to be going with people who you expect will run about as fast as you want to run, so you can pace with them.
I think that was the major difference between yesterday's race, and my previous one in the Bronx -- good starting position. I was in tremendous shape this summer, but yesterday, I went almost six minutes faster.
That's not to say that I didn't feel great yesterday, even though it was really cold. I just kept chasing people down, thinking "OK, surely after this person, I'll pace with them and not pass anybody else..." ... but I kept feeling good, and my body kept telling me that I could keep catching people (even, apparently, increasingly fast people). So I did! Pretty much the whole way. My second half was faster than the first. At three miles, I thought "oh good! Only ten miles left." And then once you've run five miles, what's another seven? For the last, perhaps, mile and a half, I was hurting a little bit, but that's to be expected.
So brutal :) Maybe next time I'll break 1:30?
Upshot: we were pretty fast!
Alex: 1:33:56 (that's 7:11 minute/mile pace), for a new PR!
Lindsey: 2:06:31: For her first half, so it's necessarily a new PR! (but it's much faster than half of her previous marathon best.)
I had a really good race. We were staying at a hotel close to the starting line, and also thankfully close to packet pickup, convenient because we had to get our numbers and chips on the morning-of. So we showed up with time to spare before the race started, and were able to find good places to start from.
That's an important strategy point -- it's a danger, in road races, that you'll start too far back from the starting line. Your personal clock doesn't start until you actually cross the line (there's a little RFID chip on your shoe), but you don't want to be behind a wall of slower runners at the beginning of the race, and even more than that, you want to be going with people who you expect will run about as fast as you want to run, so you can pace with them.
I think that was the major difference between yesterday's race, and my previous one in the Bronx -- good starting position. I was in tremendous shape this summer, but yesterday, I went almost six minutes faster.
That's not to say that I didn't feel great yesterday, even though it was really cold. I just kept chasing people down, thinking "OK, surely after this person, I'll pace with them and not pass anybody else..." ... but I kept feeling good, and my body kept telling me that I could keep catching people (even, apparently, increasingly fast people). So I did! Pretty much the whole way. My second half was faster than the first. At three miles, I thought "oh good! Only ten miles left." And then once you've run five miles, what's another seven? For the last, perhaps, mile and a half, I was hurting a little bit, but that's to be expected.
So brutal :) Maybe next time I'll break 1:30?
