Strider 1/2 Marathon - Takin' Care Of Business/Mile 12

Yesterday morning didn't start exactly as I had planned or hoped. I was very sleepy when the alarm went off at 4:30, and when I walked out the front door 20 minutes later the weather was warmer and more humid than I expected. And once Steve Schroeder and I got to downtown it was much breezier than I would have liked as well. But you take what they give you and deal with it. It ended up not being as breezy during the race as I thought, and I think it actually was colder when I finished than when we started.

My pre-race time went fine. A 1.4 mile jog then some stretching, then a few strides with Doug Schroeder. And several bathroom breaks in there too. Got to just behind the front line of the start and was ready to go. Everything felt fine.

I was careful to not go out too fast and planned to run my own race. If someone (like Doug) was just in front of me and doing a pace 5 seconds faster than my target pace of 6:23 to 6:25 I wouldn't think twice about letting them go. And that's what I did. By the end of mile 2 I was pretty much alone. Somewhere early in mile 3 I realized this and decided to catch up to the small pack in front of me that featured a fairly large guy who I thought I could draft off of. I surged to catch them but I didn't stay with them long and fell back into no-man's land again. I was shortly passed by Chris Robbins, someone I had seen pass me at the 10-miler. We chatted briefly after introducing ourselves to each other but he's a bit faster than me so I let him pull away.

Chris was the last runner I was close to for a few miles until I hooked up with another runner for some company on mile 6. His name was Casey Lajaunie, and he told me he was shooting for a 6:30 pace. Even though that was slower than I planned to go, he and I were on pace for a 6:21 at that point so I decided to hang with him for some company for a bit and see how it would go. I abandoned that plan when we hit the next mile marker (mile 6) at 6:37. I had to get back to my own thing, alone or not so I took off. I had no more company until the very end (more on that later), although I did pass a couple of guys at somewhere early in mile 12.

The next several miles were uneventful and I was running at a controlled pace, in command at all times. I had settled on a 6:25 target pace and just before I came to a mile marker I would compute in my head what total time I'd need to be at through that upcoming mile marker in order to be on target. I knew I was ahead of that pace but I wanted to know by how many seconds. It hovered around 15 or so for the next few miles. This little excercise also gave me something to occupy my mind with.

At mile 10 I was at 1:03:52, which was 18 seconds ahead of what 6:25 would have me at for that point. But mile 11 was 6:27, which put me back at 15 seconds ahead of 6:25 pace. At this point it was "man or mouse" time. A good race, possibly even a great race was in my hands, but I still had a couple of miles to go and didn't want to give anything back in the way of two miles at 6:40 or anything. My stretch goal was a 1:23 something but I remembered from my pre-race calculations that a 6:25 pace would put me into the 1:24 and very low-change area. I decided not to leave anything to chance and strapped on my game-face - it was time for some hard-hat running. Mile 12 went unbelievably well. I passed two guys who were obviously in a different place than I was. I clocked my fastest mile thus far - a 6:13, and had picked up two spots, something that's hard to do when you're in no-man's land and in the first few dozen runners.

Now I felt pretty sure I had sub 1:24 in the bag and just wanted to keep hammering. The 6:13 mile hadn't sent me over into red-line territory but I was getting close to the bottom of the tank now, which is where you want to be with a mile to go. I saw a runner up ahead who I thought I might be able to catch, or at least pursue to make sure I had drained the tank. I crept closer and closer and with about a quarter mile to go could see that it was Leno Rios, a great runner, and a super guy. At the Marathon Kickoff 5K Leno had yelled at me from behind, just before the finish, that he was coming for me and challenged me to show him what I had. He told me later that he didn't think he would catch me in that race but wanted to make sure I worked hard at the end. I decided to return the favor. I yelled up ahead at Leno that I was coming and to show me what he had. He motioned with his arm to bring it on. I closed on him and we were side by side with about 100 feet to go. I wasn't really bound and determined to beat Leno. He's a great guy who I am starting to consider a friend. I really wanted to just use this last-minute opportunity to make sure he ran his best and to make sure I ran my best. Leno put on a little surge of his own right at the end and finished 1 second ahead of me.

THE DETAILS:

1:23:29 (6:22 pace - 1 second per mile faster than my 10 miler)

35th overall, 7th in the 40-44 age group.

Splits: 1st half - 41:58, 2nd half - 41:32 (I love negative splits. Hard to come by though.)
Mile splits:
6:15
6:22
6:19
6:25
6:24
6:37
6:16
6:28
6:23
6:22
6:27
6:13
6:18
:38

This was a great race for me. I'm especially proud of my fastest mile being mile 12. And the hills weren't an issue either. Maybe the squats paid off.