An Unplanned Half Marathon Race

A few months back, Marty and I were having this Idea about trying to get the group together to do the Monster Dash Half Marathon.  I was hoping to get at least 15 people to all dress up as Spartans and reenact the scene from 300 where Leonidas and his Spartans meet up with the Arcadians.  Oh, it would have been hilarious if it worked out!  But, in the end we only had 4 of us from the group and a few other friends running it.  Those that were from Fit Lifestyle were Cat Yabut, Melissa Pizarro, Dan Ly, and myself.  So, we didn't do the 300 Spartans reenactment and Dan and I didn't even wear a costume.

Carmen, Cat, Dan, and Tim

Since we were situated somewhere in the middle, it took me about a mile a fighting through people to get to some open, uncrowded running.  Glanced at my heart rate, that looked good.  Checked my pace, seemed to match up with my effort.  I felt great and I was haulin' at about 6:50/mi.  It was actually a pretty uneventful race. After making a loop around Grant Park and meeting up with the lakefront path, the race headed south to about the Museum of Science and Industry ad back.  When I made it to the turnaround, I decided to try to keep an eye out for Cat and Dan and for some reason while I was looking for them, I didn't feel the pain of the race.  My breathing wasn't bad, I felt calm, and kept chuggin' along at that 6:50/mi pace.  Once I saw them, though, I put all my focus back into the race and started to feel it again.  At this point I was looking for the 10mi mark since I decided I'd crank it up a little bit for the last 5k.

The 10mi mark came so I brought my pace down to about 6:30-6:35/mi.  That was tough!  It was ok for the first mile, but I started really feeling it for the second mile.  I started running out of gas and started slowing down on that last mile.  I couldn't let myself fade too much because the finish line was so close so I just held on for dear life!  I always go back to Armstrong's quote about pain only lasting for a little while and then it's over.  So in the last quarter mile I pushed the pace as much as I could and finally went under the bridge that lead to the finishing chute.  

Once I finished I knew I hit a PR, but I wanted to see my official time to see by how much.  After waiting around a little bit I pulled up my results and killed my previous best by about 1min 45sec!  This is huge especially since I raced on tired legs which included an 11mi run just the night before.  I was pretty excited to see the gains keep coming from training for this Ironman, I really didn't expect this much improvement in single sport racing.

From that point I waited a little bit for Cat, Melissa, and Dan who all did very well.  A special congrats goes out to Dan for completing his first half marathon that day.  Nice job Dan!  And, of course, Melissa and Cat also ran a great race...keep it up you two!  After that we head out to O'Shaughnessy's for a good wind down from the race and some awesome recovery food!  Ok, for real this time, next stop....IRONMAN COZUMEL!!!