Capital City Half Marathon
Normally I wouldn't post a running race report, but since this was a "comeback race" for me, I thought I jot down the highlights.
The race: Capital City Half Marathon in Olympia, WA, May 15. Weather - rained all night and throughout the race, making puddles everywhere; temp of 52F with no wind, just light rain.
I'd done this race twice before, in 04 & 05, but the course was different/hiller this time. I went 1:34 +/- each time before. More recent HM times (09 & 10) on a similar hilly course were 1:37 +/-.
I had two main goals for this event. First, I wanted to run under 1:38, based on my VDOT, training times, and supposed 0.5% dropoff per year d/t aging. That was based on my expectation of the old course, so on this course, 1:40 would have been my goal. Luckily, I didn't know about the difference until I was in the middle of the race! Second, I wanted to see if I still had the capacity to push myself in the middle and end of a real race, something I've worried about since my bike accident last Sept, whether I still had my competitive drive in race conditions.
Result: 1:37.21. 59/1250 racers, 55/460 men, 2nd in AG. To help me judge what this time meant (since I hadn't done the course before), I looked to two other racers who are 1 and 3 years my junior, and who are both consistent racers and close to my times. One, Tim, is unquestionably faster than I am, e.g., in March we were in a 5K together, and he went 90 seconds faster, his usual spread over the past 7 years. As the distance gets longer, I get (relatively) closer, but still, he's still usually been 1-4 minutes faster than me for a HM.
At the start, he was set up near me, and took off in the mild melee of this 1250 person race a little faster than me - par for the course, I figured. He was wearing a bright yellow vest, easy to see, and slowly after the first long hill, I caught up to him between miles 4-8. I easily pulled ahead both on the downhill and the second long uphill. I figured I should push the hill a little, because the race finishes with a mile downhill, and with that and his natural speed advantage over me, no way could I beat him unless I was ahead before then.
That plan worked well until I found mile 12 I didn't have any punch left. My last mile was 7:19, which sounds OK (my pace for the race was 7:25), but the other two races I was more like 6:30-6:40 for that section. He ended up beating my by 40 seconds, all in that last mile. Oh well, it's closer than I've ever been to him in any race before. Wait'll next year!
The other guy, Stan, is normally about my speed, +/- 60 seconds. He was 4 minutes behind me in this race.
So my conclusion is: I haven't lost a step running, which means I'll focus a bit more on my biking and a lot more on my swimming over the next 3 weeks in my tri training camp leading into IM CDA. I know I've lost 10% in my swim (the pace clock on the wall does not lie), and I still haven't done a ride longer than 4 hours yet. My next test will be that IM, my goal being to prove to myself I'm as fit as I was 9 months ago, even if my swimming has aged (at least) 10 years during that time.
Comments
Lynne
Congratulations on achieving your goal! So great to see this, and the same week that Patrick is returing to the scene of his crash. Love it!
Al, you rock. Great race. Your swim will come back, once a fish, always a fish. Keep that in mind. That never leaves you.
Great deal Al !!!