Race results are finally up, 50 hours after I finished! I ran 2 seconds faster than I thought. I'm happy with my place divisions too: top 25% overall, top 12% of women, and top 15% of females 30-34. The results also list my age grade: 58.64%, which I hope to greatly improve to whatever my maximum potential is.
It was about 60 degrees at the start, with some wind. Sometimes I psych myself up too much for a race, so I felt kind of "off" all day Saturday (scratchy throat, unstable stomach, etc.). But I woke up feeling great on Sunday. The race starts on Coronado Island and runs past the beautiful Hotel del Coronado in the first mile. There's a slight downhill, and an uphill before mile 6 (overpass). At mile 9.5, the race does an out and back to 12.5, and then heads to the finish. There is a short, but somewhat steep hill at about 10.5, which was brutal, but then we immediately got to go downhill. There was a .5 mile straightaway to the finish, which was kind of frustrating because it was still so far!
I ran with Amanda for the first 10K. She called out our pace, because she was prepared and had her Garmin! Here are my splits, up to mile 12. It got messed up after that. 8:39, 8:40, 8:44, 8:45, 8:35 (hill), 8:41, 8:29, 8:38, 8:25, 8:31, 8:01 (hill), 8:33, ???? I'm not sure about mile 12 either, because I think the mile marker was wrong. I was SO CLOSE to a PR, and to breaking 1:50. I look at my earlier splits and wonder if I could have gone a little faster then, but I truly know that I gave 100%. I tend to start conservatively and make it up later on. I don't know if it's the best racing strategy, but I love picking up the pace late in a race! When I ran the 8:01 split, I was really encouraged, but it turned out that I wasn't able to hold that pace, even on the downhill. At the end, my lungs felt fine, but my legs were shot. So, I need to work on the anaerobic component of my running.
Overall, I am very encouraged by my time, ESPECIALLY when I'm doing all easy mileage in my training. Based on my current fitness, I think I'll be able to PR (sub-3:54) at my January marathon-yippee! |