Half Marathon Man (original title I’m sure)

So… first half marathon, all 13.3 miles of it, done.  Yes I know but SPR wasn’t possible since there were 25,000 runners and #notarunner in the race and I didn’t know the route as this was a very last minute race.

freezing my testicles off didn’t help.”

My planned race the day before got thunderstormed out and cancelled.  So… my running partner, her husband and myself signed up last minute for the OKC Memorial Marathon.  Half marathon technically.  I drove down the day of after about 3 hours sleep and we ran the race.

It was unexpectedly cold, colder than I was ready for and dressed for so that was a thing.  Pre race it was low 40’s and I was dressed for mid 50’s. And by the end of the race, soaking in sweat with a bajillion mile an hour wind in my face along the last mile it was OMG cold.

The race went pretty well all things considered.  I lost my running partner somewhere between miles 6 and 9.  I kept looking back and she was there and then she was gone.  I tried to find her a couple of times and then I thought maybe she’d passed me but I was alone at the end of the race and as a result we didn’t cross the finish line together.  That’s my biggest disappointment of the race.

In the end we had pretty good run I think.  I wasn’t super happy with mine but it was acceptable.  I’d planned on doing a 2:36 and ended up with a 2:39.   With better pacing it could have been a 2:30 I think.

My running partner crossed a little after me.   Our other running friend cut several minutes off his half marathon PR and this was a hilly race so he did super awesome.   He has a plan to be a BQ in the next couple of years and I really think he can do it.  He runs like a madman and doesn’t follow any training schedules.

The OKC Memorial run was very well put on, good corral management, there was no congestion on the race at all.  My races up till now the front of the herd is always full of slow runners and walkers so the first half mile is always a juggle as the herd thins out and everyone finds their natural paces.   This was a pretty nice change.

Lots of aid stations, one every mile and a half or so supplying both water and powerade and the volunteers seemed actually happy to be there in the 40 degree and damp weather.

My only issues and they’re minor is the finisher shirt hand out took some time to straighten out and the line for the promised Carl’s Jr hamburger was about a billion miles long so I ended up with a banana.

I had a few minutes of being in a bit of a mood after the race was over, mostly just knocking on myself for having to walk a couple or three times during the last 2 miles (again a hilly race) and wondering how my partner was doing.   Then having to wait a a fair long time in the line for the finisher shirt while freezing my testicles off didn’t help.

But it passed and in the end I was okay with it and that’s a key thing to take away from any race.

All in all while it was a super expensive race (major race, sign up at the last minute and have to travel = not cheap) I think it was worth it.  It was the last long race till Fall that the four of us were going to be able to do together.   I have another half in a couple of weeks but that will be the last non-5K available in the area for the summer.

Gear wise I ran in my Nimbus 18’s with my Stryd on it.  The Stryd measured 13.27 miles while my Fenix 3HR measured 3.40 miles.   13.27 wasn’t unexpected as there wasn’t any way I was doing the SPR on the course.  At one point one of my feet got wet from getting splashed and I was worried about a blister after feeling my sock start to bunch up but it worked itself out.  But my Stryd seems to read slightly high on mileage so I set the calibration factor on my Fenix 5 down to 99.7% so it should get a little closer to perfect.

My biggest take away from the half marathon was confirmation that road running is boring.  Mind numbingly boring.

But my goal is to finish a 50K on a trail so that’s less boring.  Better scenery, more interesting and entertaining running and being one of the few who make it beyond a half marathon and the very few who make it past a marathon.   I’m not sure my physiology (so not built to run) and let’s be honest starting training to run a 50K when you’re 50 while oddly ironic isn’t necessarily the best starting point.

But what else do I have to do with my spare time?