It's Over!

I completed the half-marathon yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not able to run the entire course without walking. I am disappointed about that, but I am happy that I ran the longest I have ever run before I had to walk. Also, I am happy that I completed the race and was able to run over the finish line.


The race started out pretty well. I was under a 10 minute mile pace for the first 2 miles (around 9:55 or so), and was at about 40 minutes when I reached the 4 mile mark. I started to really slow down and feel drained by the time I got to the 6 mile mark, but I kept running at that point. Shortly before the 8 mile mark, I reached the beginning of a long, upward hill, which was a real challenge at that point in the race. Part way up the hill, I passed the 8 mile mark and kept running for a couple hundred yards. Then I had to walk. At this point, I had been running for over 1 hour and 22 minutes, about 2 minutes longer than my previous longest ever run. I walked the rest of the way up the hill, then ran again on the downhill leg, until I reached and aid station and walked while I ate an orange slice and drank some water. For about the next 3 miles I ran and walked off and on, running on the downhill portions, and walking up the hills. After the 11 mile mark, I ran a downhill portion of about 3/4 of a mile, then walked until about the last 3/4 miles of the race. I was able to run the last 3/4 miles, even though there were a number of times I really felt like I needed to walk. I crossed the finish line in 2:28:14, which while slower than I had hoped, was still acceptable.


Here are some of my stats:

Overall Place: 2627 out of 3839 finishers
Place by Gender: 1555 out of 1930 finishers
Place for Males 35-39: 236 out of 278 finishers

I am very sore today, but glad that I was able to complete this race. I definitely hope that I can do better if I choose to try again next year. I think that having to take a few weeks off (essentially) due to my calf injury hurt my training a lot. Also, only building up to 8 miles in training was not enough. My training plan had me doing 11 miles a couple of times in training, but unfortunately, I was not able to get there, and I think that is a large part of why I needed to walk a lot during the last 5 miles of the race.