I always say that I do a great job at races when I'm not coming in too confident and run poorly at those in which I come in looking for a PR. The trend continues. The temperature has been well above average for this time of year over the past week or so and my training has been so-so. I'm over the knee issue that plagued me for about two months, but I did not feel great about the weather. It's been downright miserable on short runs let alone on a 13.1 mile trek. My attitude for this race was to simply enjoy the sites of Columbus (my favorite city to run in) and run around a 1:55.
This race started along the Scioto River in downtown Columbus. It was pretty warm and humid when i made my way to the start at around 7:00. I overheard a lot of people saying they weren't looking to PR because of the weather. Based on the reports I've seen on Facebook, it looks like many runners ran a sub-par race.
We started out along the Scioto and I was amazed at how fast I felt I was going. Too fast. I didn't feel great by any means. I just couldn't slow down without feeling like crap. 8:45-9:00 per mile is my usual pace for the first 5k or so. The first mile clocked in at 7:56. Way too fast. The second mile was more of the same as I came in at 15:52. Even splits but way faster than I meant to go. The 5k came in at just under 24 minutes when I usually try for 26-27. I really don't know why I couldn't slow down during this first part of the race. The race conditions were far from idea. I even started taking water at the second water stop. Speaking of the water stops, I have a serious complaint about them. The volunteers did a wonderful job, especially considering the heat and humidity, but this is the first larger race (13,000) I've done where each water stop was only on one side of the road. This was a nightmare at some stops because of the number of runners. Nobody wants to cut off other runners to run over to the other side of the road for water/Gatorade. The entire race was like that.
I don't remember most of the mile splits past the 5k mark. Most of them were around 8:00-8:10 per mile. We ran over the Lane Ave. bridge, which was pretty cool, and near OSU campus. We didn't see much of this area during last October's Columbus Marathon. It was nice to see a few different areas. The fastest part of the course was going south on High Street, being a nice slight downhill run. I hit the 8 mile mark at about 1:05. Again, much faster than I wanted to run but I was hanging in there. We then took a short detour east away from the downtown area and then back south toward German Village. The ten mile mark came in at 1:20 and change. I've mentioned before that I usually hit it in 1:25-1:30. As opposed to my last half marathon, I did not decide to go all out for a PR but instead opted to simply hold a steady pace.
German Village is a nice area to run through, but I have a complaint about this section of the race. We were to wind our way through town some before heading back up High Street. Right before High Street, we ran maybe a quarter mile or so on a brick street. Maybe it's just me, but I'm sure many runners don't want to be running on a brick street around mile 12 of a half marathon. It wasn't terribly uneven but bad enough. High Street was up next and it was a challenge to finish this race taking the uphill portion of High toward downtown. It was around one mile even, though I heard from many people that the course was closer to 13.25 miles. I believe it because the finish line seemed very far away from the 13 mile marker. At this point I finally realized that a slight PR was a possibility. I gave it everything I had left and crossed the finish line in 1:45.35, a new PR by 9 seconds!
This was a very strange race to get a new PR. The course is definitely fast but the weather conditions made it a challenge. I never hit the runners high that I seem to get whenever I PR either. It never felt easy and I never just glided along. I'm pretty amazed that I ran a new PR, but I'm realizing that this isn't (and shouldn't be) a possibility at each of these races. My next race is definitely one that isn't conducive for fast times so I'm hoping I can just relax and have fun.
Next race: Geist Half Marathon- Indianapolis, IN
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