It was 37 degrees when we left the house at 5:30 AM for Salem (race start at 7:00 AM). Other than the cold, it was a beautiful day and a beautiful course. The race start is at the Salem Willows park right off Salem Harbor. Here is what the harbor looked like as dawn broke:
Aware of my traditional slow starts, I did a 3/4 mile warmup as well as the usual stretching. Nonetheless, I only managed a 9:30 mile pace for the first two miles and didn't break a 9 minute mile until the fifth mile, when my pace dropped by nearly a minute per mile. It wasn't until I got up the first serious hill in that fifth mile that I felt truly warmed up. Finally around mile 6 I settled into a steady race pace.
The rest of the race felt pretty good but as planned I didn't push it as hard as I had the Triple Threat Half Marathon in August. Especially since the very slow start put paid to any hopes of a half marathon PR. I cruised in the last few miles and, unlike the Triple Threat Half Marathon, I was not thrashed on finishing the race. Here I am finishing up:
I ended up running a 1:53:17 at an 8:38 pace, about 3 minutes slower than my time at the Triple Threat Half Marathon. Naturally part of me was hoping for better given the easier course than the run in Rockport and the cooler temperatures, but it turns out the cooler temperatures worked against me, making my start even slower than usual. (And as usual, I spent miles 4 and beyond passing people). Also the missed training in August and my recent illness didn't help. The slow start doesn't concern me much because it's not going to matter in a 26.2 mile race at Disney, and neither will it likely be 37 degrees at race time in Florida.
Where to from here? I'm done with racing until Disney, except for maybe the odd 5k for kicks. I didn't lose as much weight since early August as I hoped (only a couple of pounds). 186 is still a lot of weight for a runner - only 4 lbs short of the Clydesdale division - and I definitely feel "big" when I run, in the sense that I know I'm really working hard to run at race pace (compared to when I was younger and weighed 160 lbs and felt like I was gliding along). Obviously those youthful days and certainly 160 lbs isn't going to happen again, but I still think I have something like 15 lbs I can take off, and I'm convinced I will feel much different running with a weight in the low 170s than 186. And I think I can take if off if I get truly religious about avoiding carbohydrates and cheating with Coke. That's the whole point of this exercise in any case - to motivate me to take off as much weight as I can.
The true marathon training is going to begin as well, as I've been planning to follow a three month training plan from Hal Higdon that I'll talk about in a forthcoming post. Up to now I've been building a base from which to start this training.
No comments:
Post a Comment