First of all the best news. Even though I was treating todays “race” as my 20 mile fast finish long run, I won 2nd place in my age group at the Great Race of Agoura’s Pacific Half Marathon! This will earn me 5 points in the HDR points contest!

Before I go on about my race, I am seeing online that Sergio Reyes and Justin Pantananan were there to run the 10K! Sergio took 2nd place in 29:50 and Justin was 12th in 32:46 (one week after running 2:31 in the LA Marathon.)  Jose and Yeni Estrada also ran the 10K. For some reason Jose is not showing up in the results. Yeni was very happy with her 56:56.

Stephany Estrada ran the Deena Kastor 5K. I don’t see the times yet available online.

Eric Dombrowski ran the Chesebro Half marathon with a time of 1:48:50. Good Job Eric.

After my run I immediately ran into the Estradas. I had my eyes open for you Eric, but I never spotted him in the crowd. Between the four races there were probably close to 10,000 runners!  Jose and I were watching the finish for Stephany and we never even saw her go by! Yeni found her and had to call Jose to find us! The four of us had a great time after the race visiting all the food booths. This race has the BEST post race set up of any race I have been to.

Now, onto my race:

As in 2010, I drove to Agoura nice and early so as to do a 6.9 mile warm up before the Pacific Half Marathon. I parked near the park where all the races finish and ran the half marathon route backwards to where it begins. I should note, here that the course does a big loop in the first part so you don’t have to run the whole route to get from the end to the beginning.

 What I don’t remember from 2010 is how dark it was as I did this 6.9 mile warm up. The first two miles, on the north side of the freeway, I was running along the side of the road with the headlights of all the arriving cars in my eyes. It was hard to see where I was running. Once I got on the other side of the freeway it was better. I got to the start and looped around a bit until I had the necessary mileage.

Once the race began I stuck with my plan. I did not race the first part of the race. I took my time getting to the top of the hill in the 3rd mile and then I picked up the pace. Comparing the first 4 miles with 2010 I was already about 40 seconds behind.  As the race continued, I had some good splits and some not quite as quick as last time.  Here is a comparison of the splits:

It is interesting to look at these totals and compare them to the numbers from my training peaks Performance Management Chart. In March of 2010, I was training for Boston but this training was occurring  after a great performance at CIM. I went through the training program not needing to build much in the way of stamina. On the day of this race I had a Chronic Training Load of 96.5 (97.2 is the highest score I have acquired.) My Training Stress Balance at the time was -2.4. As a quick review, the Chronic Training Load is considered your fitness and the Training Stress Balance which considers your freshness is considered how ready you are for a race. So I was as fit as I have ever been but not particularly tapered and race ready. Today I have a Chronic Training Load of 89.1. This was built from scratch after the two month layoff last fall. My Training Stress Balance, my readiness, was also even lower than 2010 with a score of -5.

For a more thorough discussion of these numbers see this post.

So, I was not quite as quick as last time, but I am happy with the day! I won 2nd place in my division and have put in the work that will get me one step closer to a fine race at Boston.