New half marathon PR!

Today was my first race of the year, the Kaiser Half Marathon, and despite the impeding forecast of showers today, I was undaunted.

I awoke at 5am and in my car just before 6am on my race to the parking lot along the Great Highway. In darkness, there was already a line of cars entering and exiting the lot. I circled through the lot twice, missed several parking spaces (bad parking karma) and figured I would have better luck on the street. Fortunately, I found a spot along Lincoln and 41st St. and soon made my way to the shuttle buses that would take me to the start.

The wind was starting to pick up. The skies had pockets of blue among the dark clouds looming above but no rain. I bumped into a couple people I knew, or rather they spotted me. I'm not a morning person and I tend to zone out and focus on one goal and make a beeline to that location like the port-o-potty line, or the water station, or the bag check. I caught up with the Pamakids, warmed up for a couple miles before we all got wet from a five minute shower burst.

Several minutes later, we were off. The first four miles, I ran a steady 8min/mile. The next three miles led us on a slight downhill out of GGP to the Great Highway. It started to rain heavily. At one point, it felt like I was being pelted by hail. The only good thing about getting soaked was that the wind was on our backs going south toward the zoo. I tried to pace myself with two other people who were running slightly ahead of me. Once I reached the zoo and rounded that corner for the last 3 mile stretch, I felt like I stepped into a wind and rain tunnel. The head wind was so strong I had to lean forward and shuffle through it. Along the highway, people were pointing out the rainbow ahead of us. "Run for the rainbow", this guy called to me. Yeah, the rainbow was nice and all but my knee was locking and my ass muscles started to tense up. I just wanted to finish. With a mile to go, there was a break in the weather and the sun briefly came out.

I sprinted the last 400 yards to the finisher chute with a time of 1:48:13. The clock listed 1:49 or thereabouts as the official time but it might be more than that because one guy in the chute decided to stop and not move. We couldn't get around the poor guy to hand off our bib tag. He was obviously dehydrated, weaving side to side and very nearly passed out in front of us.

All in all, it wasn't a bad race despite the weather. Now I have a new time to beat!

another year, another race

Yea! It's a new year! And well, the second month also. I'm a little late in posting, not to mention my slacker training schedule. I blame the weather though. It's been rainy and windy. This city is thoroughly in the midst of winter season which makes it a little more difficult to run and bike outdoors. No gym membership to speak of so running in place doesn't qualify for a great cardio workout.

In any case, I have my first race of the year in less than two days. The Kaiser Half marathon is this coming Sunday and rain or shine, I'll be running for the Pamakids racing team. Of course, this means I will be wearing their kick-ass green and white jersey that won't keep me warm in freezing rain and wind. But that's a-okay. I'll just run faster, won't I?