55 miles total for the week. Other than the New Bedford Half Marathon on sunday, the most noteworthy training run was a hill workout on thursday. I ran 8 miles including a warmup and cooldown, and in the middle these repeats (6x):
- 60 sec up at 5K race pace
- 2 minutes recovery pace continuing up the hill
- turn and run downhill hard for 2 minutes
- recover for 90 seconds to the bottom of the hill
A good marathon training program includes a long distance race toward the end of the program before the big event. My training partner Joe Loureiro and I ran this half marathon, and another training partner Will Swenson will run the Eastern States 20 miler. It's typical to have pre-race butterflies sometimes days in advance of a big test like this. But this time I was both preoccupied with work and family activities as always, and also thinking ahead to my ultimate goal - Boston. So I felt no jitters whatsoever. I posted this the day before the race: A Cold Blooded Tweet. Well, those jitters finally appeared, and they came up big on race day morning as we traveled to New Bedford. There are a lot of details to be concerned with on race day from sleep to nutrition to hydration, etc. But foremost is the idea that you want to put all of that incredible training effort to good use right now - today.
A Good Field
This race is a pretty big event in New England and there are several runners I know or follow who participated. I traveled with Joe and some runners from the Merrimack Valley Striders running club, and knew I would be seeing friends including Erica Ouellette, Matt Story, Denis Tranchemontagne and Yvonne Yen. And a prominent local runner Nate Jenkins would be competing (and likely challenging for the overall race victory - he did, and placed second overall in another very impressive performance).
Beating Expectations
Before the race I guessed maybe I could on a very good day race 1:25 and beat my previous 1:27+ performance in the Bay State Half Marathon in Oct. 2011. I did some back of the envelope calculations, imagining I might turn this into an interval workout (4x 5K intervals with very short rest periods in between), and maybe put together a 1:25 result. Well, I guess I was way off because I finished this race in 1:21:48!!!!
There are two hills on the course, but also long stretches of gentle downhill running that I think greatly assisted my pace. I started to notice some very fast (for me) mile splits especially on the downhills starting in mile 3/4 and just kept going with it as long as I could. Well, when I came up upon my friend Denis at about 11.5 miles I still had enough left in the tank to finish strong. He told me if I put in a good kick I could get under 1:22 for the race. After a fist bump and exchanging some encouraging words I gave it a shot. He was right - as I turned the final corner I could see the official race clock ahead ticking off 1:21:40, 41, ... and I knew I had it. What a great feeling to be running strong down a straight stretch to the finish line knowing you've just beat your best time by nearly 6 minutes - fantastic! Now that is the definition of a good day on the race course!
My mile by mile time splits from the New Bedford Half Marathon
Race Results from coolrunning.com
Also very gratifying to see was that nearly everyone I know managed a PR or very close to it. Joe Loureiro managed his best half, even in the face of some physical challenges in recent weeks of training. I'm so glad to see Yvonne get a sub 2 hour half as she is preparing for the Chicago Marathon. Erica Ouellette her training partner and Chicago teammate also got her best time. Matt Story too got a PR while battling some pain during the race. And Denis just about matched his best time also set in New Bedford last year.
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| Me and Joe (wearing the MVS singlet). Still smiling early in the race! Both photos courtesy of http://krissyk.smugmug.com/ Krissy Kozlosky |
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| Working hard in the first half of the race. No smiling now! |
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