Star City Half Marathon - Roanoke, VA

Star City Half Marathon - Roanoke, VA

The Workout:

Half Marathon 1:34:28 PR!

The ladies and I rolled up to Elliston for an early Thanksgiving dinner with Bethany's family this past weekend. Late last week, I was browsing BRO online, looking for race options for the weekend and came across the Star City Half-Marathon. I thought it would be cool to do a race totally unplanned for and decided to make the call when I woke up Saturday morning. Saturday morning came and I was up at the crack of dawn thinking about the race. Resolved to go run, I went downstairs and sucked back a quick breakfast of Cheerios and a banana. Ellie woke up while I was getting ready but fortunately for Bethany, Grandma and Papa Lonnie were already up and ready to play. Early registration started at 7am and I arrived just a few minutes after at Rockwood climbing gym to sign up. After registering, I had some time to kill so I just lounged out in the car listening to one of the XM radio comedy channels for the next hour. In between spurts of laughing out loud, I tried to develop a game plan for the race. Would I go out strong and try for a P.R. or just take it as a leisurely long run? Finally, I decided to just wing it and shoot for a nice medium pace of 7:30 miles. I also resolved to leave the batman belt and just use the supplies of water, gatorade and gu provided by the race support staff. Around 8:15 I went inside to get ready. Now was another tough decision... what to wear? It was about 40 degrees fahrenheit by 8:30 and most people seemed to be dressed for cold weather running with tights, long sleeve wind breakers and warm hats. At first, I resolved to run with gloves, tights, running shorts, a long sleeve underarmor shirt and a long sleeve tshirt. As the 9 o'clock hour approached, I must have changed clothes 5 different times as it got progressively warmer. With 3 minutes to go until the gun, I jumped back in the car and took everything off except for a pair of running shorts, a wicking short sleeved t-shirt and some light gloves. I was cold for the start but this ended up saving my bacon in the end as most people ended up being way overdressed when the sun popped over the ridge. Around 500 people assembled at the start line for the simultaneous release of the 5k and half-marathon races. The gun went off and we all shuffled along for the first 100 yds until things started to open up. I decided to take it easy for the first mile to get warmed up and then just play it by ear from then on. I kept the horses reigned in ok for the first half mile but the normal sensation of looking around and sizing up my co-competitors settled in. "I should be faster than that dude" so I would pass him. "That guy is old and I should be faster than him..." pass again. I did this for about 5 minutes until I came to the realization that most of the people I was passing that looked like they should be slower than me were actually running the 5k which followed the same course. I felt pretty silly as they peeled off for their last leg at the 2.5 mile mark. I was running around a 7:20 pace for those first few miles. As I got warmed up I started inching down closer to a 7:15 pace. Miles 4 and 5, I was running with some guys claiming to be shooting for an average 7:30 pace. Miles 5 and 6, they started to pull away. I thought to myself that they would die later in the race and that they were going too fast for their projected pace. By mile 7, I recalculated my pace and realized that it was actually I who had slowed down to the mid 7:20s and they had stayed consistently around 7:15. Around the halfway mark, there was a man rattling off times. As I passed, he looked at me and said 45:05. I couldn't believe it. That would put me on pace for a 1:30:00 finish if I sped up ever so slightly. I was baffled but stoked at the same time. I sped up a bit and caught up with a guy who reminded me of Lonnie, all bulked up and military looking but huffing and puffing. He was shooting for a 7:30 average and a PR performance. I noted that we were quite a bit ahead of that schedule and figured that he would probably drop towards the end. We talked for a while and then for some reason when we passed the mile marker 8, it hit me hard that there was only 5 miles left in this thing. I was feeling pretty good so I opened it up a bit. For the next 4 miles, I progressively sped up, dropping down to around a 7:05 pace. With one mile to go, I was very ready to slow down but just kept ticking off the minutes, knowing there wasn't much further to go. I was able to bag a few more positions and the last was the most strategic. I made the final turn with 1000 yards to the finish and just one person within reachable distance. I started to speed up but quickly realized that if I simply increased my pace to catch and pass him by the finish, he would naturally speed up and fight off the attack. My only hope was to break his spirit immediately and then hope he didn't realize that I had nothing left when I got in front of him. I realize that this was pretty silly seeing as how I was not in contention for anything and that guy probably didn't give a crap about beating me but it was fun to tap into my competitive spirit. I got the sensation that I was back in a high school track meet and everything was on the line. I pounded the pavement and hawked the dude down. He started to speed up but I was at almost a full sprint and passed him agressively and decisively. As I passed, I literally saw his head drop and shoulders slightly slump and heard him say "good finish". I held the pace just long enough to create a space of a few strides and then practically coasted in to the finish line with absolutely nothing left in the tank. I looked down at my watch hoping to have run a sub 1:30:00 but it told another story. 1:34:28... The time teller either had the wrong time, or was not at the half way mark because I ran the second half of the race much faster and was no where near the 1:30:00 I had projected. Never the less, I probably wouldn't have run as fast if I hadn't seen him and the end result was a personal best so I am glad he was there. I received my finisher's medal and ran a few minutes cool down jog on a soft soccer field resulting in some light calf cramping. This was another good sign and it felt good to think that I really left it all out there on the course. I grabbed a few oranges and jumped in the car to head to Thanksgiving dinner back in Elliston. The rest of the day was spent lounging in a lazy-boy nursing a bit of a dehydration headache, eating the biggest meal of my life and then later feeling much better, going out to see the 3D version of Beowulf with Jason, Lisa and Bethany. The movie was almost as entertaining as us cruising around Salem with our 3D glasses still on joking about how everything really did look 3D and was "super awesome!".

Last night, I finally got around to looking up the official race results and was surprised to find out that I came in 36th place overall out of 260 participants but more importantly, came in third out of the age groups from 20 to 29 yrs old. This would have actually earned me an award had I stuck around for the results. Se la vie', it was well worth the experience.