Half Marathon

This morning I ran in the Kentucky Derby (half) Marathon in Louisville, KY. I ran the full marathon there 2 years ago, and afterwords, I felt like... well, not good.

I had been training pretty hard for this run with a plan of running 8:30 miles. I ran my own 1/2 marathon here in Millersport (a simple out and back course which I believe was a bit short) several weeks back, and I did it in 1:52:27, so I was hoping to hit that time in Louisville.

I got down to Louisville in the evening and went straight to the Expo center, where I picked up my race packet (including bib, t-shirt, info on about a thousand other races, and some of this stuff (best.invention.ever). I also bought a clearance racing jersey.

I met up with Nate, Jimmy, and Dusty at the expo center, and after some jumbled directions and a wild goose chase or two, we ended up at a noodle place eating Pad Thai. It was spicy and yummy. I was slightly afraid that it would pay me back during the run, but I was fine.

Right before we ate, my friend Mike N called, so he came and hung out with me for a while. It was so good to see him hang out with him - he was a good buddy from NK/NB soccer playing, 5K running days, and he moved to Louisville. We caught up and reminisced about the old days.

Then it was on to the Galt House, our accommodations for the night. We all got ready for bed and hardly slept. I kept dreaming that I was running the race and getting badly chafed from my new shirt, which, in the dream, was waaaay too small. I wasn't alone in not getting much sleep, so despite all our discussions on what time to set the alarm for, we were all up and at 'em by 5:00 am. We caught a shuttle to Iroquois Park and waited...

Nate, Jimmy, and Dusty all ate some energy jellybeans. I almost puked just at the thought of them. In fact, I gagged a little bit right now as I wrote about them. I brought along a gel, most of which I gagged down about 45 minutes into the race.

The race started predictably; with a mess of people through whom we had to weave and dodge our way. Once we got into the hills, things opened up quite a bit.

I tried to catch my mile splits, but I missed some of them. My splits were as follows:
Mile 1: 8:59:41
Mile 2: 8:33:56
Mile 3: 9:34:18 (included a potty break)
Miles 4/5 (missed the 4 mile marker): 17:10:48
Miles 6/7 (missed the 6 mile marker): 16:18:46 (at which point I told Jimmy we needed to dial it back a little bit)
Mile 8: 8:33:97 (back on track)
Miles 9/10: 17:04:44 (you wouldn't think it would be so hard to see mile markers, would you?)
Mile 11: 8:22.50 (I can smell the finish line by now)
Mile 12: 8:16.59 (here I come!)
Mile 13: 7:22:86 (now that's a strong finish!)
the last .1: 1:34:23.

Race results: Bib # 4443. Chip time: 1:51:48.
Place: 972 (overall, out of 9397); 145 (age group)

I had a lot of fun in this race, and (as you can probably tell by my splits) I had quite a bit of energy left for the finish. I was happy with my time and with my consistent mile splits (the first three miles were a wonder that I was able to run even that fast because of how many people I had to avoid).