Saturday, August 26, 2006

2006 Somerset Stampede 1/2 Marathon Results

1:25:55
7/103 Overall
2/5 Age
Official Results
MEO Somerset Stampede 2006
I have never run a more hilly course in my entire life. Up, down, up, down, up, down. There were two big ones within the first 5 miles, but I took those with little difficulty, driving my arms and shortening my stride. More and more hills after that made it such that the relatively small hill at mile marker 10.5 kicked my butt. I felt like I was walking.

My first mile was 6:15 pace as was miles 2 and 3. I slowed down to a 6:20 by mile 7 but I felt good. I thought (at the time) I could make it the whole way at that pace. Mile 9 started getting me bad, and I started to slow, which was distressing. I wanted to break 1:25 (failed) but I managed to beat my time from the Martian half marathon I ran back in April. Considering this race was so hilly and the humidity was 90% (and apparently a little ‘long’, we started at the wrong sign I guess) so I will be happy in the result.

There was a local band made up of teenagers that would play parts of motivation songs as runners came across the finish line (we were spaced out quite a bit) Well, they were playing ‘Run like Hell’ by Pink Floyd as I came across  That is significant because my .mp3 player was just finishing the original version of the same song about 100 m before the finish line. Kindof cool, actually.

The new head cross country coach Brian Olsen at JCC started out behind me. He told me he was treating this as a training run for the Detroit marathon. He passed me ~5.5 miles in and ended up beating me by about 1.5 minutes. Now he will brag to the team. Oh well. _I_ have only been running for about a year now. _HE_ has been running for 30 years.

Once again, just like at the Martian half, I ate too much food afterwards and my gut feels crappy. The food was really good, and I was hungry. I just need to remember to slow down. I had my 1 car-boom pack at mile 7.5 and I think it helped. I was stupid to open it just as I came upon a hill, though. My legs feel great and have 2 small blisters on my toes. Everything else feels good. I might even go out and do a run tomorrow.

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