Canyonlands Half Marathon
1:31:51
Splits
1 - 6:50
2 - 6:50
3 - 6:43
4 - 6:43
5 - 6:54
6 - 6:54
7 - 6:56
8 - 7:04
9 - 6:58
10 - 7:04
11 - 7:17
12 - 7:19
13 - 7:10
13.1 - 1:10
It was surprisingly cold after the buses dropped us (my brother-in-law, David, and me) off at 8:00 am the unloading zone. But we were happy the wind wasn't blowing. There were enough restrooms and some hot drinks to tide us over the two hours until race time. I even saw a friend from college that I hadn't seen in probably 12 years.
Around 9:15 am the DJ started saying that the gear bag trucks would be leaving at 9:30 am. I realized then that we weren't at the starting line and still needed to hike up the road to the gear bag trucks and the starting line. Still no sun and it felt really cold.
As soon as we dropped our bags off, we started on a warm-up run. David did about half a mile and I did two miles with six strides to get used to my pace. After the warm-up, I was able to walk up near the starting line without too much trouble.
The gun went off and I went out at a reasonable pace for the first 0.3 miles that was a steep decline. I caught up to the 1:30:00 pacer quickly after being about five seconds behind the gun. There was quite a group around the pacer and I followed behind for a mile or so. At about 2.5 miles, I sped up a little and got out in front of the pace group with the plan of slowly peeling away so I could hit my goal of 1:29:##.
By this time, there were only patches of shade every once in a while and the sun was warming things up. The scenery was fantastic and the winding and gently rolling road was very pleasant to run on. Unfortunately, my pace slowed down on mile 5. I took a packet of gel at about mile 6 and there was a nice downhill section that I was able to speed up on.
But my pace kept drifting. I started getting worried about my time after mile 8. I noticed that the 1:30 pacer hadn't passed me but I knew I wasn't on track. I guess the pacer was having some struggles too.
Mile 8 had a couple of smaller hills that didn't help and then there was the big one on mile 9. By this time, I started chanting in my head "1:29", but it wasn't going to happen. There was another more gradual hill on mile 11 that I couldn't recover from.
I was hot, the river and nice scenery was gone and I just kept slowing. I didn't even have enough to do any sort of sprint at the end. My wife and girls were at the finish line cheering me on but I was done.
I finished two minutes slower than I wanted but at least I wasn't injured. Smarter training (more consistent weekly mileage and less missed workouts) would have made the difference I think. In any case, the race was well organized and I had a good time.
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