Start time: 03/25/06, 7:00am
Location: Washington DC
Distance: 13.1 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 6:1
Finishing time: 2:06:08
Average pace: 9:38min/mile

I always wanted to finish a marathon by knocking an hour off of my previous personal record. It’s not necessarily the easiest thing to do, but I came close twice; 40 minutes off between 2001 and 2002, and the agonizingly close 58 minutes off between 2004 and 2005. At this point I’d honestly given up having a new PR that was an hour under the old PR; I’d improved enough that I wasn’t going to have that leap in a marathon ever again. (I’ll still improve, yes, but not quite that much.) What I never really saw coming was that I still had the opportunity to do that with just a half marathon.

Now to be fair, as I said to an e-mail that I sent to my family, it’s slightly easier to drop a huge, huge amount of time when the previous time you’d run that race distance involved also still having a huge, huge amount of extra weight. My only previous half marathon was back in 2003, and was in fact one of the two very disappointing races that year that helped prod me towards realizing that just running very slowly was not going to help me drop the pounds (and that I needed to start eating better). But none the less, my 2003 finishing time was 3:14:39, or a 14:51min/mile pace. This new race was 2:06:08, or a 9:38min/mile pace. And oh, what a difference.

I was a little worried at the start of the race; I had a sudden brief “what the heck am I doing here???” thought shoot through my head right as I walked over to the start line. Fortunately I’d met up with Dennis (who was running the marathon) and Dave (who’d come to cheer) and I think having someone else there was a good reminder that yes, I could do this, it didn’t matter my longest distance was a 10-miler, life would be just fine. Before I knew it, the race started and we were off… which was a strange feeling, to be honest. Normally it can take a loooong time to get over the start line; here, we crossed with the clock only having one minute on it. Wow. There’s something to be said for these smaller races.

The early part of the race went pretty well; we started by looping around RFK Stadium 1 1/2 times (which meant that three minutes in we passed a marker that said “Mile 1” to much hilarity, since we’d be going by it again before too long) and then headed towards the Capitol and the National Mall. I must admit that I had some slight concerns at this point, but perhaps it was because I’d managed to step in not one but two pot holes somewhere in the second mile. Yeesh! Add in a missing “Mile 2” marker (so I didn’t know how fast I was going) and my “uh oh” gene kicked in. Well, until I kicked it into submission. No more worries at that point, thank goodness. It was a really pleasant race, and for something that I’d done at the last minute it was nice to see a bunch of friendly faces; Dennis, Rick, and Brooke were all running as well (Dennis and Rick were more masochistic and went for the full, though), and at various points of the course I saw Alma, Christa, Julie, Cal, and Dave.

Somewhere around mile 11 we were in the heart of Anacostia, which apparently became undesireable land way back when because it’s full of hills. I was more than a bit relieved at this point to not be running the full marathon, which had 15 more miles to go and almost all of them apparently very hilly. Since my longest run post-marathon was a 10-miler, I was also starting to feel the distance right around here, so being able to have just two more miles to go was a relief. So I kept trucking along, trying to avoid the craaaaazy woman running and talking to random people (or the air around her) around mile 12.5, and trying to ignore the two sudden twinges I had in my achilles tendon with less than half a mile to go. (I haven’t had those in quite a while, now. More stretching next time.) Finally I was over the finish line, with Julie cheering wildly and taking pictures which I’ve uploaded onto Flickr. (I really love the one of me leaning on the metal fence, taken about 10 seconds after I finished the race. It just says it all.)

I’m delighted with my performance, and pleased with my decision to run it. Provided the race comes back for a second outing, I do whole-heartedly recommend the half marathon option. Generally speaking it’s flat and fast, and really quite fun. Big thumbs up!

Last but not least, hurrah to skill_grl for winning the “predict Greg’s time” contest! Unlike last year were a lot of people guessed too low, this year the reverse happened with far too many overbids. Her 2:05:30 was remarkably on the money. (And hurrah to paygem for having the only other “under” guess. Which, to be fair, even I didn’t!)

Ok, here’s the mile by mile breakdown for the National Half Marathon… with some annotations along the way.

Mile 1: 10:02
Miles 2-3: 19:09 (avg 9:34min/mile)
Mile 4: 9:28
Mile 5: 9:17
Mile 6: 9:51
Mile 7: 9:40
Mile 8: 9:46
Mile 9: 9:34
Mile 10: 9:35
Mile 11: 9:57
Mile 12: 10:09
Mile 13.1: 9:34 (avg 8:42min/mile)

Mile 1 was one of my slowest miles, which makes sense because that loop-and-a-half around RFK Stadium was awfully congested. What’s funny is that because of the congestion I skipped my walk break, and yet it was still the second-slowest mile.

I never did see a Mile 2 marker and I don’t think there was one; there was bizarrely a Mile 2.5 marker which struck me as very strange but in hindsight it may’ve had to do with for whatever reason there not being a mile 2 sign. If I’d been smart I’d have hit my watch button there, but I just waited until mile 3 and punched it then.

I have no idea what happened for mile 5, but I certainly paid for it the next time through! (Maybe it was seeing Coach Christa on the sidewalk cheering? Or seeing Dennis start to head back after a loop-around?)

Miles 11 and 12 don’t surprise me at all. By that point I was in Anacostia’s hills, and in distance territory I hadn’t visited since the marathon back in October. My finish-line-in-sight adrenaline burst didn’t really hit until probably 12.8 or so, so I’m pretty amazed that the final mile dropped by so much. Maybe I was just happy to be out of the hills!

(Come on, folks, release the official results! We’re now two hours past what your qualifying time is, surely everyone is done… Ok, they’re finally up. Final official time was actually 2:06:08 (one second off!) and I placed 133/156 in my age group (30-39), for an 85th percentile. Considering you were supposed to qualify with a certain time to get in, I’m pleased with that placing. Overall finishing was 710/958, or 74th percentile. One of these days, above 50th, one of these days…)