Capitol City Half Marathon

So before I knew it the second race of the season was upon me.  After my longer than anticipated recovery from the last one I had only managed really just one good week of solid training before tapering a short week before this one.  All in all I felt pretty good leading up to it though, and I thought I had a legitimate shot at cracking the 1:30 mark given my performance in Hollywood a month prior.

This was another travel race for me.  Since my brother moved to Columbus last spring I have been meaning to head out there and pay him a visit.  I figured as long as I was traveling that way I might as well schedule my trip the same weekend as a race of some.  What better way to explore the city of Columbus than by running 13.1 miles around its city street, right?

I got into town Thursday night.  The drive was a relatively easy 10 hours from home.  I wasn't too sure how the legs would like being cramped up for that long so I made sure I did plenty of walking on Friday around the expo and downtown Columbus searching for a brew pub to eat lunch at.

Race morning went smoothly. Got up and had a bagel then drove and found a parking spot near the finish line with plenty of time to spare to walk to the start. I got up near the front and watched the guest speakers come on stage.  Soon enough the gun was going off.  They were cranking some Volbeat at the start so it was easy to get pumped up and go out fast. For the first mile I was up near the front and by a couple of guys who said they were shooting for a 1:30 pace. Perfect.  I hung with them for a bit and it didn't feel too hard the first few miles so I was pretty surprised to hit the 3 mile mark at 20:20. So far so good, but I decided to dial it back just a touch. Got to see the horseshoe around mile 5, which was really neat. I'm not a Buckeye fan, but still cool to see. Hit mile 6 at 41:40. Oops, didn't need to dial it back that much. At that point I decided holding 7's would be adequate, but that soon became a struggle. I watched my time slowly drop the next few miles and when the cop at an intersection stopped a bunch of us to let an ambulance and fire truck across I knew a PR was out the question. A few people continued to dart in front of it as it was turning, but I figured my time wasn't as important as someone's who may have been getting transported out of there.  Once I got going again I tried to get back to pace but the legs just weren't cooperating with me. I could not get them to turn over for the life of me. Feeling fatigued, the last couple of miles ticked by pretty slowly as I tried to finish best as I could. Eventually the finish line showed up and I was just happy to get across at that point.

Total Time = 1h 36m 43s
Pace = 7:23/mile
Overall Rank = 236/8056
Age Group = 30-34
Age Group Rank = 39/549

I walked around and found some food and scored some chocolate milk. Yum! I found my brother and his girlfriend and we hit up the post race concert so I could get my free beer, which unfortunately was a Michelob Ultra. I did pass on the free sparkling wine though.  The band was playing some LMFAO covers so we didn't stick around too long.


All in all, this was a well run race, with plenty of volunteers and entertainment along a nice route through Columbus. Just a top notch effort. So while I am disappointed with my results, I have really nothing to complain about regarding the race itself and how it was run. I was just really surprised to start feeling fatigue around mile 7/8 especially when I held solid 7s at Hollywood for 11 miles before that hill at the end.  Compound that with the fact that come October I'll need to run 7:15 miles over the course of a marathon it's got me feeling a little down.  I realize that race is still 5 months away and there's plenty of time for improvement and that I can't expect to have a great race every time I go out.  Still, there's a bit a disappointment, but luckily I have the drive to turn that into fuel for the training fire.  The next 5 months will be a lot of hard work, but I'm definitely looking forward to the challenge