Half-Marathon

I felt like going for a long run yesterday, since I’d rested a few days since my last run, and since I’d been running pretty consistently before that. The runs I’d been doing were about 4 miles each, and I’d been focusing more on speed than distance, trying to hit the magic 7:00 average per-mile pace which I’m always after for that distance.

A lot of the reason for my consistency in running recently (and by consistency I just mean running more than once a week) has to do with a cool gadget which my folks gave me for Christmas. It’s a Nike Triax CV10, which consists of a watch, a heart-rate monitor chest strap, and a foot pod which goes on one’s shoe. Together these devices allow me to know up-to-the-instant data on heart rate, pace, distance, whether or not I’m in certain “training zones” which I can set, etc…

Most of the features are a bit overkill, since I’m not really training for anything and don’t have a real reason to monitor my heart rate closely; however the pace/distance features are really useful.

Anyway, so I’d been running a bit more than usual, and I ate a lot of carbohydrates this week, so I figured I could handle a long run. I planned on going about 8 miles, got all dressed up in my spandex and climacool shirt (it was pretty chilly outside for Florida, and it was drizzling), and connected my gadgets (sans heart-rate strap because I figured on a long run it might irritate me).

Well, the gray drizzle was actually awesome to run in, as it kept me nice and cool–so I settled into a moderate pace and enjoyed myself, after experiencing some stomach pains the first couple miles, due to the large Italian meat and pepper sub sandwich I’d had for lunch…the thought of running on that is pretty nauseating to me even now.

About mile 4 or 5, when I started to relax into the rhythm of what I was doing, it occurred to me that, if I felt up to it, I could try and run farther than 8 miles–I could run 10! In fact, why run only 10 when 3 more would get me to 13, which was basically a half-marathon? The thought got me kind of excited, because I’d never run that far before, and moreover had considered training for half-marathon races in the past. Well, it was a good day, I was feeling strong; why not just get it done with now?

So that’s more or less what I did–I ran 13.2 miles, though for many of them my vision was somewhat off due to the rain and/or condensation on my glasses. I’m glad I didn’t run into any cars or stationary objects! And, thanks to God, my knees and joints and muscles and tendons all held together for the most part–telling me they hated me once in a while, but never giving out completely (which has happened in the past, and which puts a halt to any lofty goals!). Moreover, my blood sugar level seemed to do OK, and I didn’t get too dehydrated (thanks to the cooler weather and the rain, I think). So it was a fortunate run.

All told, I did the 13.2 miles (though a real half-marathon is only 13.1, I believe) in 1h50m. That’s an average pace of 8m24s per mile. To me, that was a pretty big accomplishment–not only did I run farther than ever before, I did so at what I consider to be a respectable pace. On top of that, for the most part my mile splits got shorter as time went on, meaning it probably wouldn’t be too hard to improve considerably on that time.

Well, I just wanted to write all that for posterity. On that note, here are the mile splits:

(There was a strong headwind going eastbound on the path I took, so that is usually what accounts for any increase in times.)