That is the name of the race, but it has an extra significance for me….

My goal for the half marathon this morning was to finish it. That’s it – finish. If you’ve been following my blog you know that the longest run I ran all 2015 was 8 miles. On Jan 1 of this year I stretched that out to 9. On the 9th I made it to 10 running in the mountains with Erik and Krysti. The last time I ran 13 or more was August 31 of 2014. I ran 16 that day on an ill advised run over Goode. (Ill advised because I jumped from 13 to 16, ran too fast on the downhill, and overall pushed the pace way too much.) So today, stretching from 10 to 13 made me a little nervous.

I lined up with the 2 hour pace group. A 2 hour half is about 9 minutes per mile which should be a rather comfortable long run pace even in my current condition. As the race began I stayed with the group for about a half mile. I was feeling good and just let myself get into a comfortable rhythm. My watch beeps a split at every half and I kept seeing splits between 4:10 and 4:20 though. Several times I consciously backed off fearing the last three miles.

The course was interesting. At one point it took a detour through a studio lot. In general it was heading North and East almost always uphill – never too steep but uphill nonetheless. When it finally turned around, the downhill felt pretty good. The paces continued in the low 8s per mile. I just kept cruising till the beginning of mile 13. At this point I realized that a quick enough last mile might get me in under 1:50 so I began to push the pace. I kept pushing pretty hard for half a mile – I saw a sub 8 split. I figured though that I was being stupid pushing so hard on legs not accustomed yet to the distance. I eased back off a bit and cruised in. Official time 1:50:09

I averaged an 8:24 pace.

https://www.strava.com/activities/477569787/embed/f1a587b497fabb400a4cb34fd10b240ed304b3d3

This morning I weighed in at 186. I plugged 1:50:09 into a VO2 max calculator and got 40.3 liters O2 per Kg body mass. If I reduce my body mass by 9% to 170 pounds that number will change to 44.0 liters O2 per Kg. Plugging that 44.0 back into the race calculator yields a 1:42 Half Marathon. What this is saying is that in my current condition, if I were 9% lighter I’d already be that much faster. The equivalent Marathon time for the 1:42 is a 3:32. What this tells me is I simply need to lose the weight and get myself trained to race 26 and I should easily be able to run a Boston Qualifier of under 3:40.

Of course, as I do the training, there will be additional positive affect…

This is very encouraging.  This is a run to remember as I begin my quest to get back into shape to qualify for Boston.

Others I saw out there today included Grant Barnett – He PRd at 1:31:54, Erik Ruble – He ran it at Marathon goal pace as a training run for LA in a couple weeks. Krysti Ruble, Oscar and Dora Guttierrez all ran at Krysti’s marathon goal pace somewhere around 1:55 I believe. Joe Kim was out there as well running sub 1:35.

My weekly totals are 30 miles running and 36 on the GO

My goal for next week is the same… I am easing upward VERY cautiosly.