Nike Women's Half Marathon

     A few things about this post.  First, I wouldn't say that a Nike Women's Marathon (NWM) race is really my cup of tea.  I think I prefer more local races, and races where men and women are running. Nothing wrong with other aces, that's just my preference. Second, I really really hate it when people are disingenuous about their training and the work they've put in for a race, and then are like "I accidentally PR'd by fourteen minutes."  I don't want this post to come across like that and I don't believe in accidental PRs. Since I've started working with my coach in November, I have put in lots of long long weeks of training. It's been lots of hard work. It's just that the training has been more tri specific, and not focused on running, and certainly not focused on half-marathon type running.  And now, to the recap.

    Quite a few months ago, a friend of mine asked me to do this race with her.  I said "yes" and suckered my friend Robyn into joining us. Unfortunately, the friend who invited me wasn't able to run because of some health issues, so it was just Robyn and I.

    I rode the train up to DC on Saturday and met up with Robyn. We went over to Georgetown, got our packets, found our name on the wall, and went to the expo.  The expo was not what I expected at all.  It was a lot of beauty products and samples, and everything in the expo had little to nothing to do with running.  Needless to say, we didn't spend much time there and headed out to get some dinner and get back to the hotel for an early bed time.

    Going into race morning, I had very few expectations.  I knew I'd been training hard.  I knew I was in the best shape I've ever been, but my coach made it clear that we hadn't been training for this type of race, so not to have any goals.  My plan was to start off at what felt like an easy pace, and if I still felt good around mile 9 or 10, push it from there. Easy enough.

    Race morning came bright and early and we met a friend from home, April, at the metro station around 5:15 to head to race.  We got there with plenty of time to spare, hit the porta-potties and went to check our bags.  After bag check, we went our separate ways as Robyn and April were in the "pace group" in front of me.  I will stop right here to say that the way the "pace groups" were set up was ridiculous.  Instead of having actual corrals, they just had you enter with people who were running around your same pace.  However, once the race was about to start, they removed the ribbons separating the group and it just became one large herd of people.

With April and Robyn pre-race

     After I left April and Robyn, I decided it would be in my best interest to hit the porta-potties one more time.  When I got back to the "corrals" (still 15-20 minutes prior to the start) all hell had brocken loose.  I couldn't fit into my corral and by the time I was able to squeeze my way in, I was actually with the pace group 2-3 minutes per mile slower than where I should be.  At that point, however, there was nothing I could do about it.  

    Once the race officially started, I crept forward with the mass of other women, went over the timing mats, and began running once it was possible.  I alway, ALWAYS go out too fast, so I told myself this congestion was a good thing in that it would certainly keep me from going out too fast, and that it did.  After about a mile I was able to pick it up to a comfortable pace, but kept reminding myself to keep it easy.

     The course was great.  My only complaint is that we didn't spent much (if any) time around the monuments, but you could see them.  I enjoyed the views, chatted with some fellow runners and constantly told myself (even out loud at sever points) "stupid easy, Rosalyn.  Keep it stupid easy."  I've never been able to run a well-executed race.  I just kill myself in the first 5-6 miles and then crash.  I wanted to see if I was able to gradually pick it up over the course of the race, and with a solid showing of self-restraint on my part, I was.

     My first 5K was the slowest, the next 5K was 28 seconds faster, the next 5K was 14 seconds faster than that, and the final 5K was 6 seconds faster than that.  After 20K the pace was even faster as I picked it up to the finish.  I remember thinking that I never started feeling really badly, or overly tired until right at mile twelve, and then I told myself "I can do anything for a mile."  I was glad to see the finish line come, but didn't have that overly-exhausted feeling.  Probably a strong indicator I had a bit more left in me and could have pushed it a bit more at certain points of the race.  Overall though, I was happy with the race I ran and afterwards although I knew I probably could have pushed it a bit more I couldn't have asked for a better run.

     I knew I wasn't trained for a 13 mile race, but I also knew my fitness has improved greatly since my last PR at the half-marathon distance.  I was expecting that those two things would balance each other out and leave me somewhere close to my current half-marathon PR and was happy to find that I was right.  I ran about a four-minute PR!

With Robyn at the finish after a delicious lunch!

    Learning to execute a race plan is a new thing for me.  I'm certainly not the fastest person in the world and am certainly not winning these races, but I'm making steady progress on chipping away at my previous times by increasing my fitness and by following the race plans that have been laid out for me.  The biggest thing I took away from this race is simply a reinforcement of something I already knew: my coach knows what he's doing.  Since I've started working with him, I've seen major improvement at every distance I have raced.  3 minutes on my 5K time, 6 minutes on the 10K, and 4 minutes on the half marathon (tomorrow I'll talk about improvement in tris).  I know that I just need to keep following the plan and I'll be more than ready for my 70.3 in June and Ironman Florida in November.

Happy Training, Friends!