It seems pointless for me to get worked up about having run a half-marathon yesterday. In fact, running 13.1 miles was actually a step backwards from my marathon training schedule, which instructed me to run 19 miles on Saturday. In training for Vegas (which is only about 5 weeks away now!) I’ve already completed runs of 14 miles (in 2:02), 15 miles (in 2:05) 13.1 (1:48), 17 miles (2:28), 18 miles (2:36), and 13.1 miles (1:47). So, big deal. Except when you’re running a race, a fully-sanctioned, official race, you (or at least I) put forth a level of effort that exceeds any practice runs. Like…I ran 13.1 miles yesterday and today my body is way more sore than it has been during any of the longer runs I’ve done during the past thirteen weeks. So, there’s that.
The race started at 7:30am yesterday, so I set my alarm for 6:15am. I stayed at the JW Marriott downtown so I wouldn’t have to worry about transportation to/from L.A. Live. If I stayed at home I’d have to drive downtown (through street closures), find a place to park, find a place to store my valuables and keys, then hope to get to the start-line on time. By staying at a hotel I could valet my car and leave all my valuables in a hotel room, then walk like twenty yards to and from the start/finish lines. It was a pretty sweet deal.
After a light breakfast (two mini bagels and a banana) I got dressed, stretched, and walked to my corral (number three). We started from (roughly) Figueroa and 12th streets at L.A. Live. This is according to my Garmin, which kept almost perfect track of the race (except while I was in the 3rd St. tunnel, and at the finish line, which it said I reached 50 seconds faster than the official timer). The corrals began to fill, I plugged in my iPod earbuds, performed a few last-minute knee stretches and waited for our turn to go.
It wasn’t like Vegas Marathon last year, when my corral (#6) started bobbing up in down in unison right before we started. There was a much calmer start. Maybe half-marathoners don’t feel the need to pump themselves up as much at the outset. The other difference was, when we started in Vegas last year, probably 30% of the people in front of me immediately broke for the sidewalks so they could relieve themselves. That didn’t happen this time, either. We started — and it was slow out of the gate, for sure — and that was that.
I kept a steady eye on my Garmin at the outset because I wanted to make sure that my first few miles weren’t hampered by slow runners in front of me. I wanted to run close to eight-minute miles at the start, keeping myself in front of the 1:45 pace runner for as long as possible. If I started to decay and he caught up, then I would know that I needed to push myself harder. My first mile was run in 7:59.8, my second mile was 8:01.2, and my third mile was 8:14.7.
We started by running down Figueroa all the way to Exposition Blvd., at which point we turned onto Menlo Ave. (running past the Natural History Museum) and into Exposition Park, where we circled the L.A. Coliseum. Then we retraced our path back out Exposition Blvd. to Figueroa, diverging from our original route at Pico. Mile 3 was the lowest elevation of the race, and at Mile 4 the elevation slowly started to rise. I finished Mile 4 at 7:59.0, Mile 5 at 7:58.8 and Mile 6 at 7:56.1. To say my pace was steady and comfortable would be repetitive. I was consistently around 8:00 for the first half of the race.
Mile 7 featured the second highest elevation gain of the race, and my time reflected that. Running up Flower St. to 3rd Street, Mile 7 took me 8:40.3, which was easily my slowest of the race. The combination of the elevation and the clusterfuck that occurred at the 3rd St. tunnel was likely the cause of this slowdown.
From 3rd Street we turned onto Central Ave., which tooks us into Mile 8. Somehow I blew through this downhill turn, finishing in 7:24.5, my fastest mile of the entire race. Mile 9 took us over another brief elevation gain, the bridge that runs over the LA River where 6th Street turns into Whittier Blvd. We made our turnaround right near the 101 overpass, and came back up and down the bridge just about at the start of Mile 10. I finished Mile 9 in 8:04.8, which is to be expected because that bridge was a fucking bitch to hit so late in the race. Well played, whoever designed this course. Well played…
Miles 10 and 11 took us back along the same route in the opposite direction, from 6th to Central to 3rd, and back through that awful clusterfuck of a tunnel, which we hit right about at the start of Mile 12. I finished Mile 10 in 8:18.6 and Mile 11 in 8:01.3. Sensing my relatively closeness to the finish line, I didn’t notice the steep elevation gain during the penultimate mile. Barreling towards the finish line — from 3rd Street to Figueroa — I finished Mile 12 in 8:12.2. I knew the runner with the 1:45 pace was right in front of me (I think he passed me either in the tunnel or near the bridge), and that I needed to run like hell if I was going to finish at my goal time of 1:45. I ran hard down Figueroa towards the finish line, perhaps harder than I should have, and hit the Mile 13 sign in 7:31.1, my second fastest leg of the race. From there it was .1 miles to the finish line at L.A. Live, and as I crossed the line my Garmin display read 1:45:06.6. Six seconds off my goal. Not bad at all. Oh, and in case you were wondering, “Yeah, but how did you DO in the race?” I finished 640th out of 8,209. I guess that’s okay.
Me pointing and saying, “I see you!”
Why yes, I *AM* too cheap to pay for the official photo.
So how does this prepare me for Vegas? According to Runner’s World my estimated finish time based on this event would be 3:39. Considering I finished my first full marathon in 4:23 last year, that would be a ridiculous improvement to make in just twelve months. Honestly, if I finish in under four hours I am going to be happy. All my hotel rooms are booked for the weekend of December 2nd, and you won’t hear me talk about training or running at all before that time. Consider yourselves safe for the next five weeks.
Maudlin Of The Well – Geography [MP3]
