Event – Hyannis Half Marathon
Location – Hyannis, MA
Goal Time – 1:38:00
Finish Time – 1:41:52
My usual readers will be “shocked! shocked!” to find out that I went out to fast in this race.
For some reason I had gotten it into my head that I could actually do 13 miles at a 7 min/mile pace. God, I’m a moron sometimes. At around 4 miles, my body was telling me that 7 min/mile pace was impossible to keep up.
Then I reached what I’ve always termed the Horse Latitudes. Somewhere in the middle of the race the pure adrenaline from the starting line has worn off, yet the finish line is nowhere in sight. In a half marathon, I always find this at around mile 7. Two years ago, I hadn’t run six miles at once since sometime in college, yet today I’ve already expended massive amounts of energy and now still have 6 miles to go! But the sideways snow made it way worse.
People I had passed earlier were now passing me. Slowly I began to fade back and back and back and back. I was fighting and fighting to get to the 10 mile mark (for at that point, you have only a 5K left).
Yet, the 10 Mile mark did not rejuvenate me. Unnngh.. It wasn’t until later as I reached near the peak of the last big hill that I caught it. An older couple was watching us run by at the edge of their driveway and the guy behind me said: “Hell of a hill you got here.”
To which the gentleman responded: “I’ve been walking up this hill for 30 years, you can run up it once.”
The smile released something in me and I was able to carry myself to the end. While it wasn’t a PR, I did win the Clydesdales 211-225 division.
One race; one win this year!
Tino Pai,
Jesse…
No comments:
Post a Comment