It was in the 50s at race start, which was just about right. It was a 7:00 a.m. gun though, which I did not particularly like -- you know that getting out of bed in the morning at the crack of dawn is not my favorite thing. Portapotty lines were long, so I took a chance on the next-door Amtrak station and discovered that the indoor facilities (particularly the upstairs option) had not been widely discovered. Yay! Even so, I did not get to the starting area until about 5 minutes to the gun, and it was tightly packed so that I could not make my way very far up and was stuck toward the back with people who were definitely not going to be running under 1:40. Well, there wasn't any risk of actually winning this race so it would have to do. The throng around me ensured I didn't take off like a shot, which was a benefit of being crammed so far back -- I did mile #1 in 7:28. I settled in.
There was no wind to speak of, and the temperature was comfortable. I was comfortable. I aimed to keep my miles at least 7:20, as long as it didn't start to feel like a stretch, and it did not. I let my legs do what they wanted as long as they did not push to a point where it felt like I was reaching. Even on the uphill mile (~7), I felt pretty strong. In fact, up until around mile 8 or 9, I was feeling better and better as I went on. After 9 or so, my legs started to feel kind of robotic/wooden, but they still responded to my pace orders -- it was a race, I told them, so race. Miles 10, 11, 12, and 13 were all 7:10 or better, with mile 13 being the best: 6:56. In those last three, I made use of that long downhill and then the downhill in the last half mile or so, and told myself again that this is a race; if your legs can do it, make them do it. And so they did.
I kept an eye on who was ahead of me, and if I saw a woman wearing a "HALF" tag on her back (to distinguish us from the 26.2 runners, they made us wear bibs on our backs), I made a point of reeling her in. There was a woman in the last mile that I wasn't sure I was going to get, but going up the hill on King Street on the way toward the finish, I caught her after all, which was satisfying. I aimed at the next woman ahead of me, but I ran out of real estate before I could get her.1 I glanced up at the race clock over the finish line as I crossed -- it was 1:36:XX.
I thought, "Well, good enough" though a teeeny bit disappointed it wasn't a liiiiittle bit faster -- and then, after stopping, I stopped my Garmin and looked down at it.
It said 1:35:05. What? OH RIGHT -- being so far back at the start, I hit the start mat a minute after the gun. So, OK, I was a liiiittle bit faster. I was pretty excited about that, even exulting "YES!" out loud.
My official time for the race is 1:35:04. It is about 30 seconds slower than my PR. It was good for 4th in my age group; I was 12th female; and 45th out of 891 half-marathon finishers. Frankly, after that 10-miler in Lewes, I needed this shot of confidence.
The only disappointing thing about the day was the fat-free chocolate milk they had at the post-race tent. Come on! Who wants that after finishing a race?! Give me at least 1%!!!
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1After looking at the results, it seems not to matter: she does not seem to appear in the half-marathon results, as the person that is right before me (4 seconds faster) is a 42 year old man and his race photos indicate that he is not the person who I saw just ahead of me! The next faster woman than me had a gun time almost a whole minute faster than mine, so that wasn't her either. I don't recall now that she had a HALF tag on her back -- maybe she was a full marathoner who bailed, but I thought the website said if that happened they'd just convert the result. So I don't know what's up with whoever she was.
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