Celebrate Life in Rock Hill, NY was my second half marathon in two weeks. Both were very hilly. See, I am full of excuses from the get-go on this one. Might as well throw in the third big excuse: On the weekend in between the two halfs, I did a 20 mile training run. Also hilly, of course. I could add more, blah, blah, blah. Here are the numbers. I ran Colchester in 2:04:33 on 3/22/14. I ran Celebrate Life in 2:06:07 on 3/09/14. Both of those are faster than any half marathon I have run prior to 2014.
Celebrate Life is the first half marathon I registered for this spring. Because I can’t run Ragnar Cape Cod with the Albany Running Mamas (wah, wah, wah), I wanted to do some spring race with them and somehow a bunch of them signed up for Celebrate Life. I drove to Albany Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the day hanging out with Tiny Dynamo. She’s the one who got me into running in the first place, one of those moms with a full-time job who still made time to run. We got her some new shoes at their GINORMOUS Fleet Feet. Made a burrito run. Coordinated endless details on facebook and caught up on life in general. Tiny Dynamo is a friend with whom I just pick up as if I had seen her yesterday even though we only get together about once a year. She’s a super generous runner and person and a logistical whiz and super funny and therefore an awesome friend. She’s also a serious sleep Nazi so not only was it early-to-bed, but I knew we’d be up right on time even with daylight savings.
We got up at some ridiculous hour, picked up another Albany Running Mama and drove to the bus. I knew there was a bus ride involved, but somehow had neglected to think about how long it was – pretty long. We were on the bus for about two hours! Good chatting time. We got there, got situated, picked up packets, etc. No medal for this race, but a “lovely” mustard colored microfleece jacket.
The weather was colder than anyone had been hoping for and to add insult to injury, snow started to fall at the start. Oh, and a lovely wind picked up as well. Oh well. We were here to run, not get a suntan.
Originally I had planned to make this race my goal half of the spring. When I described the race to Easy Going Trainer, I said:
“This is my goal half of the spring. I’m going to try to run it in under 2 hours. My previous PR at the half marathon is 2 hours, 6 minutes, 43 seconds so that would be a big improvement. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll try again for sub-2 in the fall. But, you never know.”
Plans change. I couldn’t resist running Colchester hard, much harder than I had originally meant to. And then the 20 mile training run. And the hard workout with Easy Going Trainer the Friday before the race. Etc. So, despite having a lovely Albany Running Mama willing to help me pace myself to a sub-2, I knew within the first mile that that wasn’t going to happen. This race was going to be work.
It was hard, hard work. Whereas two weeks ago, I was flying down the course, this felt like a battle of wills the whole way. Me against the hills or me against my own legs or me against the mile markers that seemed to show up veeerrrry slowly. It was a serious grind-it-out situation. For a lot of the race I was able to calculate that I was not going to go sub-2, but that I might beat my Colchester time. But the hills kept coming and by mile 9, it was pretty clear that even a PR was out of reach. I am disappointed. I know it’s silly because these were not PR conditions, but still, there it is.
Here’s something I’m proud of from the race. There were lots of times I wanted to quit trying to run fast and I did walk up a couple of hills very late in the race. But I always said to myself, time to get back to business, picked up the pace, and was able to get it back down to somewhere reasonable. Before mile 9 or 10, this often meant around a 9:10 pace and after mile 10, at least around 9:30.
Was the course pretty? I guess so. It was winding roads around some lakes in the winter. There was a lot of snow. Honestly, I was working too hard to enjoy the view. There was no transcendent barn moment in this race. There were only one or two hills where I ran down them super fast and passed a bunch of people. I listened to the same music as at Colchester and it was still awesome, but more rescue-me-from-this-hell kind of awesome than Top-of-the-World kind of awesome. It felt like I was running on a never-ending sine wave.
Just for the record, here’s what I used as fuel. GU at miles 4, 7 and 11, more or less. The water stops were unpredictable. I almost bailed on the third GU but I was so dead by 11 miles that I decided to take one after all. I had some water and some Gatorade. Liquids at the aid stops had ice in them! That’s how cold it was! Some good news: I used the Hammer Endurolyte tablets and I think they worked. I took one at the start and three over the course of the race. My hips did not cramp! Now, it felt for awhile like my entire right leg was going to fall off, but it was a different feeling from the cramping.
I am trying to consider the entire race as really excellent practice at running on tired legs. Instead of a half marathon, it was more like a simulation of the second half of a marathon. Indeed, if I get through the marathon as well as I got through Celebrate Life, I’ll be in excellent shape.