Week 8 - Cowtown Half Marathon

So I am late getting to this post due to various other things in life but here it is.

I ran the Cowtown Half Marathon today.  The course is mostly flat but there are several hills to note.

I started off doing pretty good running a 10:00/mile pace.  I wanted to start off slower in order to save myself for the end.  It was right around the 6 mile marker that I started to have problems where I started walking.  Just after the 8 mile marker I started to walk almost exclusively.  When I got towards the finish line I started running again even though my legs were completely dead and I was hurting pretty bad.

Right around the 4 mile mark there is a small hill with an elevation gain of about 45 feet or so. The largest and most challenging hill was just after the 9 mile marker and it is a pretty big hill.  You go from an elevation of about 515 feet to about 620 feet in about a tenth of a mile.  There was a another small hill right before the 11 mile mark with an elevation gain of about 25 feet.  You wouldn't know it but as you run across the Lancaster bridge you are running a gentle downhill and after you come across you start another gentle uphill.

This wasn't my best race as I finished with a time of 2:41:20.  I ran the day before the race and with the way I run, which is towards the top of my capabilities and it killed my legs.  I just couldn't keep them moving later on in the race.  I also fault the fact that I didn't have any time to eat something to give me that extra boost of energy that I have started to depend on.  Another thing I wasn't ready for was the warmer temps.  I had been training with temps in the 30s to 40s and it was something like 55 at 7 AM.

After looking at my time, it is actually only four minutes slower than my first ever half marathon which really speaks to how having a bad race only puts me four minutes behind my first ever race.

It's always discouraging to have a race like this but I wasn't going to drop out. Even if I feel somewhat defeated when I have to walk it is way better than quitting.  Maybe it's a good thing to have a bad race which helps make you appreciate the good races you do have.