Race Report: Music City Half Marathon

So, the race began at 8:00 and while standing around for the gun at about 7:50am. I was already sweating. I had drank a ton of water Friday day and night, I knew it was going to be hot.

But, after running a bunch of races now, I got a little too cocky with my preparation and I paid this price this time around...

Mistakes I made:

1. Not bringing my hydration belt. With temps in the 80s, I couldn't count on the race officials to provide adequate water stations. They only had stations at 1.7, 2.7, 6.7, 10.4, and 11.4. The 4 miles between the second and third station and the almost four miles between the third and fourth were BRUTAL.

2. Not bringing my ipod. For last week's race, I brought my ipod, but I didnt bring my headphones. I couldnt get my nano to start right when the gun went off, so I just left it alone and it ended up rubbing two big raw spots on my skin. So, this week, I went without it completely, thinking... well, I'll be running with Brad, so I won't need it and he has a watch and can tell us our splits. Well, that's great, except when I had to slow down at mile 4 mile and ended up running the remaining 9 miles without music. Ugggggggh. It totally sucked.

3. Going out too fast. The last few weeks, I have been running faster. But, the conditions on Saturday were not set up for that. When Brad said at the 2 mile marker that we ran those two miles in 16:43, I knew I was a goner. That is wayyyy too fast for a half marathon in 80 degrees. Crazy.

So, while I wasn't happy with my time, 2:21:16 (average 10:47/mile pace), I'm not completely upset about it. I had to walk a good portion of the second half of the race, so considering that, my time is pretty good. And it's about 10 minutes better than my half marathon best. So, I still set a PR.

After the race, I had that weird, blacking out type feeling and eventually decided it would be best for me to just head home, rather than stand around for long. So, that's what I did.

Woo hoo, I did get a medal.
UGLY T-shirts. Yuck. The blue color is hideous.



I also want to take a minute to comment about the Chicago Marathon yesterday. They dealt with record-breaking temperatures and one man even died on the course. It makes me melancholy to think of all those people who trained for that raced and were unable to achieve their dream. Some of those people that didn't finish were trying to complete their first marathon. I can't imagine how let down I would feel in that situation. It's a sad situation. One number I saw was that out of 36,000 registered partcipants, only 4,000 finished the race. And like I said, one man lost his life due to heat exhaustion. My heart goes out to all those runners.