{"id":395,"date":"2013-05-26T16:24:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T23:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/?p=395"},"modified":"2013-05-26T16:24:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T23:24:04","slug":"capital-city-half-marathon-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/archives\/395","title":{"rendered":"Capital City Half Marathon 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time I had a personal goal to run a sub 1:20 half marathon. I attempted it many times but the closest I came was last year at the Pittsburgh half marathon with 1:21:25<\/a>. According to my coach I am in shape to run a sub 1:20 but his estimation for this hilly course (700feet elevation gain) was a low 1:21. Despite of that, his race plan called for a little more aggressive approach to run 5:55min\/mile in the flats and hold a similar effort on the hills. I felt okay on race morning, but during the warm up I felt sluggish and my legs were a little sore. It just didn’t feel like it. But I tried to ignore that thought and had my mind set on improving at least my PR somewhat even if it won’t be a sub 1:20.<\/p>\n

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Start line. The guy in yellow won. Note the lady in black next to him. She lined up in the front line and finished with a 2.5+h time, I'll never understand people like her?<\/p><\/div>\n

It was a smaller half marathon with only 1200 people and for once the front line was super sparse. I thought for once I won’t start too fast since people seem more relaxed. Well I was proven wrong once we were allowed to start. They guy in yellow darted off and I initially followed him, but realized quickly that his pace was much faster than mine. Once I left him go two other guys ran past me and tried to catch up to the first guy. I quickly fell back and had already a 20 second gap at the first mile marker. This even though I did the first mile in 5:40min. There was no one close behind me and the 3 ahead of me continued to pull away. At mile 2 I was 1min back from the 3rd person and the first two were even further up the road. At mile 3 I couldn’t see them anymore and I was left to ran alone for the rest of the race.<\/p>\n

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Shortly after the start. Ahead of the field two people in yellow and than me leading the field to the first turn \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

All I did was focusing on my pace and moving ahead. I felt pretty good even though my HR was close to 180 pretty much from the beginning on. Around mile 4 or 5 my calf’s started hurting from all the hills. But it was more of tired tightness which didn’t worry me and I just tried to ignore it. I passed mile 6 in 36:15 which meant I was still on route for a PR and potentially even sub 1:20. I was already tired but I was totally in control. It was a great feeling. The downhill around mile 8 was pretty steep, so that I had to slow down which hurt my quads. Not often am I trying to run down a hill in full speed but at least with that hill I ran a 5:40min\/mile. This was right before the last long hill which balanced the 5:40 out with a 6:27min\/mile.<\/p>\n

At the 10mile marker the watch showed 1:00:37 which was on course for a sub 1:20. Pre race I decided to put it all out on the 10mile marker with basically only a 5k left. But it was still slightly uphill and my calf’s were hurting. I decided to stay conservative till I was on top of the hill. A few hundred yards later on top of the hill, the soundtrack from Rocky was blasting from someones living room and the family there were cheering for me. I figured this was the signal that I have to push harder now \ud83d\ude42 I knew that it was mostly downhill to the finish and I started pushing harder.
\nUnfortunately, at that point I started to overtake the stragglers from the 5mile run which sometimes were walking 3-4 abreast and blocking the whole path.
\nI was pretty annoying that I had to yell at them to make space but than that might helped me to run faster. I was excited to see that I ran a\u00a0 5:48 on the 2nd last mile and that sub 1:20 definitely was in reach if I keep pushing. It was getting harder and harder, but I didn’t care I wanted my new PR. A spectator along the way told me that I was in 3rd place. “hmm, 3rd? what happened to the other guy? He must have just miscounted!”.<\/p>\n

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Me pushing hard on the final mile<\/p><\/div>\n

The last couple 100 yards were all slightly downhill and I could see the finish from afar. I checked my watch and it said 1:17. At that point my brain wasn’t working that well anymore, but I knew that if I would go hard I could still make it. Once I came closer I saw the race clock and noticed with a sprint I could even go sub 1:19. So I did, I pushed hard and made it past the finish line in 1:18:48.<\/p>\n

I still don’t know what happened but apparently 2 guys in front of me didn’t finish because I came in 2nd. And once again since the winner was in the same age group and took the overall win, I received the first place award for my Age group, which was a nice looking trophy \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I finally achieved my goal to run a sub 1:20 half marathon. I still have a hard time to believe that I ran a 6:01min\/mile for 13.1mile. Since I improved my old PR by over 2.5 minutes I wonder if I could do even better =D<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only unpleasant part of the day was finding the motivation to go for my 3h training ride \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Race Result:<\/a><\/p>\n

HR and Pace:<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time I had a personal goal to run a sub 1:20 half marathon. I attempted it many times but the closest I came was last year at the Pittsburgh half marathon with 1:21:25. According to my coach I am in shape to run a sub 1:20 but his estimation for this hilly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-run"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}