Clearwater halfathon race report

halfathon = half marathon if you were wondering. i did this race yesterday and i’m paying for it today. I AM SOOOO SORE thanks to 2 bridges we had to run over twice each way…fun! i love and hate those downhills because they feel wonderful as you are flying down but that eccentric muscle contraction you get by running downhill just tears up your muscles and that my friends is what causes the intense, deep muscle soreness. this concludes your exercise physiology 101 class for the day. see? i still remember important things like that from exercise phys, kinesiology and anatomy.

before i give you a fairly quick race report, i’d like to point out the race blingity-bling in the above picture. first, please take note of the bib number 831 …it just so happens to be my birthday month and day. coincidence? lucky sign? who knows. the t-shirt is a short sleeve dry fit in small, however, it looks like a large on me, so happy early valentine’s day to the J-man. last but not least, the coveted, gold starfish medal. see close – up below:

it is a little hard to read the last 2 lines but it says from top to bottom: 6th Annual, CLEARWATER, Halfathon, January 23rd, 2011 – which is exactly 3 months since i last raced. honestly, i did not feel like i was physically ready to go hard at this race. my goal was to finish in under 1:40. i met that goal and beat a PR i got for the half marathon about 11-12 years ago. i can’t even remember if it was 1998 or 1999. let’s just say that it was long enough ago that i can’t even find an archived time but i do remember it was 1:36:?? but can’t for the life of me, remember what the exact seconds were. doesn’t matter! for all of you number geeks out there, here is a breakdown of yesterday’s times per mile courtesy of my garmin 310xt:
1 – 7:35 (stupid bridge climb so soon)
2 – 7:05
3 – 7:16
4 – 7:29 (stupid bridge)
5 – 7:06
6 – 7:05
7 – 7:12
8 – 7:21
9 – 7:30 (stupid bridge again but this time with head wind)
10 – 7:49 (last stupid bridge and more wind)
11 – 7:28
12 - 7:28
13.1 – 6:59 (oh yeah!)
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1/44 Age Group (40-44 AG)

11/261 Overall Female

51/532 Overall

i basically went out to do a training run and ended up with a PR of 1:35:30, which i will gladly accept any day. the only bad part is i have another half at the end of next month and you know what that means? i will put pressure on myself to try and beat that. i sure hope it doesn’t take me another 11 or 12 years to PR again …LOL!  i’ll be totally honest with you, i would rather do a marathon or an ironman over a half marathon, 15k, 10k or 5k. they just hurt too much. i was made to hold a nice steady pace for hours and hours and usually when most people begin to fade, i turn into the energizer bunny. that’s my strength, long distances at a steady (not to be confused with slow) pace but it is good to mix it up with other distances but i’ll save that exercise phys and anatomy lesson for another day.

i want to send a big thanks to my running buddy Amy for indirectly coaxing me into running the race and to my new friend Lisa who was in front of me as my pacer almost the entire way, even though she didn’t know it until around mile 10. we helped each other run strong for the last 3.1 miles even though our quads were killing us from those stupid bridges … and the wind!  Lisa, please come do the Gasparilla half marathon with me!!

i hope everyone had a great weekend too! much love and peace out!