I'm also tired from running this Hilly Half in Wildly Wonderful Wooster. I had no time goal, or other expectation going in. A steady effort, which on this course should translate into negative splits, would be nice, however.
Why negative splits, you ask? The course begins and ends in downtown Wooster. Almost immediately after the start, runners are going up. And up. And up some more. After half-way, it's back down towards the start on the mostly out and back course. I've done it before; I knew what to expect.
It was warm and humid during the early miles. I'd thought it would be cooler. I was doing 8:30 miles, but they were tough. The steeper the uphill section, the slower I ran. Funny how that works. I saw a bunch of friends before and during the race. Unfortunately, one of them was Doug Hradek, who is a good runner and who also happens to be in my age group.
I hit the half-way point (6.55 miles) in 55 minutes flat. Breaking 1:50 now sounded pretty good, and I picked it up a little. The downhills got better over the final five miles, so at that point, I picked it up a little more.
That's when the thunderstorm hit. It hit hard. I had been watching the clouds from about mile 7 on, and they looked scary. There were layers upon layers of dark, foreboding clouds, and I could see the rain coming down in the distance. By mile 8, huge drops were splashing down, and there was thunder all around.
Mile 9 had some steep uphills, so I slowed back down for a while. But the storm soon ended, about as fast as it started; the downpour only lasted about fifteen minutes. A light rain persisted afterwards. Mile 10 was a psychological boon this day. I hit it in 1:23:30 (that's about my half-marathon PR by the way), and began trying to run my fastest miles of the day. Would I be able to?
The short answer is yes. I ran the final 3 in 23 and a half minutes, for a time of 1:47 flat. I was second in my age group, two minutes behind Doug. First would have been nice, but I'll take it.
No comments:
Post a Comment