Race Report: Nation's Half Marathon

The Nation's Half Marathon was slated to be my first 'A' race of the year, and ultimately the second most-important race of my season (behind the Berlin Marathon in late September). E and I were using this race to test our fitness and see if we could successfully make it through a training-block injury free while still achieving some level of success.

Training went VERY well, especially considering that the entirety of our training was done during the months of December through March. Sometime in early February my training-runs eclipsed the 8:00 min/mile mark and I didn't look back from there.

My training partner, aka my beard. Don't I look manly against a back-drop of flower paintings???

The night before the race, our group hit Buca di Beppo for some carbo-loading. The whole time I was quiet and a little nervous. Not really tense, but more-so just a bit introverted and getting into things mentally. I had the course and elevation maps up in front of me so that I could memorize roughly where the tougher and easier spots would be. We ended up getting to bed by 10pm, which was slightly later than what I would've hoped, but still allowed for plenty of sleep leading up to our 4:50am alarm.

Race morning was pretty relaxed. I was the first one up and had a chance to go to the bathroom and eat my breakfast in silence. There was no rushing or scrambling as the few things needed for a running race were already set out from the night before. Instead of shivering our butts off by riding the Metro, we opted instead to pile into a nice, warm car and drive over. Parking wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We circled around the stadium and came in from the back, which gave saved us from having to wait in line with all of the other cars.

I loved that they let me customize my race bib!

I didn't have enough time to go inside and warm-up, so instead I just headed over the porta-potties, did my thing and got into my corral and started stretching. It was chilly that morning, but I was dressed appropriately and just did some jumping and stretching to stay loose. And before I knew it, the race had begun.

Our route through the city and my former home!

It was a crowded race, to say the least. You were never really clear of other runners enough that you could coast in a straight line for a long time, especially at beginning. Due to the crowds, I had to start out going slower than I would have hoped, but after mile 2 I was already back and track averaging an 8:00 min/mile. I knew going in that miles 0-5 would be rather enjoyable. My HR wouldn't be up yet, the terrain was relatively flat and the sun was not yet that far up. Already at this point I had banked about 30 seconds or so on my 8:00 min/mile goal.

That's me in the blue behind the guy in front of the Washington Monument. I have ZERO memory of running by any of the monuments - a good sign of my focus? :)

Great, right?.. but I knew miles 5-7 were going to have some hills in them so I'd most likely lose some of that time back. That's OK though, b/c instead of burning out early in the race and maintaining my pace, I had planned to drop a little time here hoping it would let me save something for later in the race. I also figured now would be a good time to grab some water, so I hit the water-station and attempted to pull off the run/pinch/drink maneuver where you squeeze the top of your cup together until it leaves a small hole that you can essentially slurp the water out of. Of course, I failed miserably and started choking on water. Net result - elevated heart-rate and zero water consumption. :(

Right around mile 5, heading uphill toward Adams Morgan.

Much to my surprise, I have actually run the route from miles 5-7 fairly often a few summers ago. This was a huge mental boost b/c I knew exactly what I was into and where things would start leveling out again. As it turns out, I did end up dropping some time, but only 15 seconds or so, which meant I still had some banked time.

I don't remember much about miles 8 and 9, to be honest. It was kind of a gap in my race-plan where I just figured I would recover a little from the undulations of the previous few miles. Of course, there were still some ups and downs that started weighing on me. I finished of a Gu and found a water-station where I wisely chose to walk for 15 or so seconds and actually take-in some water.

Apparently I was following this cleverly disguised alien.

Mile 10 had me feeling a bit rejuvenated, thanks to the Gu. However, after glancing at my watch, I had lost a little bit of time and was now only 6 seconds ahead of my 8:00min/mile goal-pace. Uh oh... getting a bit tight!

Mile 11 was planned to be a "maintenance mile," if there is such a thing. The goal was to simply run a straight 8:00 min/mile pace (whereas the earlier miles were aimed at banking 5-10 sec/mile on the flats) and prepare myself mentally for the last 2.1 miles, aka The Grind. Unfortunately, my wits suddenly started to leave me around this part of the race. What was hopefully going to be a mentally relaxing mile ended up being a mentally taxing mile. Combine that with some uphill running and all of a sudden I'm BEHIND on time and starting to come apart at the seems. Ahh!!

That's the look of confusion - wtf am I doing out here?!?!

Mile 12 and 13 were tough, to say the least. My form was deteriorating, but my mental-state was deteriorating even quicker. It's been a while since I was this far gone, mentally. All sorts of wild thoughts went streaming through my head about walking, quitting, how much this sucked, why was I doing this, can I really run a marathon in September?, arghGHHGhghGhGh!!

My data. Check out some of those sharp elevation spikes! The passes under the traffic circles started whooping me in the later miles there.

Ultimately, after about 12.5 miles I was able to break out of the funk and start to put my head down and charge for the line. The finish-line was uphill and around a corner so I couldn't see it from too far out, but I trusted it was close after I looked down at my Garmin and noticed I had just surpassed 13.1 miles.  The line came at 13.3 miles by my calculations, but I'm sure that's completely due to my own zig-zaggy route. I wobbled through the snack line and set up camp on the grass and just relaxed... finally.

Victory!!!!

My official race time was 1:45:58, which places me 268/778 (age-group), 1132nd man and 1575/9299 (overall).

Really, what a nice medal, huh?! Very impressive!

My two Garmin times were 1:44:34 (13.1 miles) and 1:45:02 (13.3 miles). I'm conflicted on which of the three times to recognize, but the more I think about it the more I think I can really use all of them. My goal was to run the race averaging under an 8:00 min/mile. I did that, clocking in according to mr. garmin at a 7:58 min/mile (close, huh?). That average includes the moment I crossed the starting line to the moment I crossed the finish line for both 13.1 and 13.3 miles. So, in that sense, I very much accomplished my pacing goal.

However, my pacing didn't align with my overall race-time. You're told to never rely on your watch for pacing alone, but to also use the mile-markers. Unfortunately, I don't recall seeing any mile-markers out on the course until around mile 9 or 10 so that wasn't really an option for me. Also, the discrepancy between what my garmin said compared to where the miler-markers were gave me even less confidence that they were even accurate. No problem though, b/c my race was geared more toward my own pacing and less on a specific finishing time, which meant I was fine with just glancing down at my watch from time to time.

Overall, this was a great experience and a positive sign that I can indeed train hard, smart and during the depths of the winter. It's now time to get in a nice/long recovery before getting back out on the roads to try and capture some shorter-distanced speed!

Enjoying the cherry blossoms.

Pretty soon there will be no more cherry blossoms, but all of the other trees will be full of green!

My training partner, post-race.

Having a little fun with the beard-removal. I present to you my 1920s-era baseball player impersonation!

Don't worry, the mustache was removed immediately after this photo was taken!