My Half-Marathon Race Earlier Today

Earlier this morning, I ran the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon as planned. And as has usually been the case with me, the temperatures spiked severely downward. It was 32 degrees at the race's start (about 8:10) with 100% humidity. Not fun at all for me. I spent most of the pre-race waiting in the car with the heater going. But eventually I shivered my way somehow to the starting line, once again deliberately behind as many entrants as I could get.

This race is basically along a single paved trail (with a slight divergence at the beginning), with the second half of the race a retracing of the path back to the beginning (or close thereto). One thing that I noticed this time around above 2010's run was that the first three miles (and the last three) of the race had a lot of hills and valleys. It was more difficult for me this year since I have only been either training around my immediate, very flat neighborhood or on the treadmill. Last year I incorporated a path that had some small hills into my training, so the race course's hills weren't such a big deal then.

In spite of the hills, I felt pretty strong throughout the run and once again decided to run the race through from beginning to end without walking breaks. Still, I was certain that my time would be much slower than last year. Imagine my surprise when I came to the finish line with a new personal half-marathon record, turning in a time of 1:59:38.

After the race, my legs were sore. But that was pretty much it for the recovery, which has gone quite well. I am very encouraged by my successful run today. After all, I hadn't covered a half-marathon distance in a run since this past January 23's Ocala Marathon. My training strategy instead consisted of alternating long runs with short ones on successive days, with the long runs varying from 7 to 10 miles. Apparently, this is the way to go for me with half-marathon training. After all, it is hard for me to argue with the results!