Wooster Heart and Sole Half-Marathon

90 minutes. It used to be such a no-brainer for me. If I didn't do mid eighties, something had to be wrong. Even for some occasions over the last few years I've managed 86, 87 or so. But more recently it's been even tougher. And I've slipped into 91 territory.

But this had been mostly a half-way decent year. Even though I still haven't recovered from Erie and yet have been training hard again, I thought I'd have a very good shot today.

There were only 60 of us. Everyone else was running the Akron Marathon or half. The weather was decent enough with temps in the 60s.

It was the hills that did me in.

The hills and the lingering soreness. But mostly the hills. There were several small to medium ones, and some long grades. It was mostly up in the first half, and then mostly down for the second. Negative splits seemed like the order of the day.

And they were. They just weren't negative enough. The early ups proved themselves too much to overcome in those last few. Here's the breakdown:

6:49
6:48
7:20
6:55
7:17
6:31 (maybe about 46 at the half)
7:14
6:47
6:43
6:50
7:06
6:50
7:33 (last 1.1)

Final time was 1:30:50. 6th overall. I almost caught Jim Wilhelm for 1st in the 50-59 age group. He had gone out real fast to try to get more points for the 10K time that was scored for the series.

Now my foot hurts some more, and I'm beat up again. Just when I was starting to feel better.