Race Report: 2009 Mercer Island Half Marathon

Pre Race

Race weekend started on Friday evening with a steak dinner celebrating my sister Allison’s birthday. Steak isn’t exactly carbo loading food but I had enough mashed potatoes and chocolate cake to make up for that. Unfortunately, I had a fitful night of sleep on Friday which left me feeling a bit sluggish on Saturday morning. We had tickets to first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament Saturday evening. The games were at 5 and 7:30 pm and since the stadium doesn’t have the greatest selection of food we decided to have dinner in the mid afternoon. So I had raw veggies with dip and pizza at about 3:30 pm. Not exactly my usual pasta with tomato sauce but that’s OK. I had a better night’s sleep on Saturday night and was up at 6:40 am to have my standard oatmeal and banana pre race breakfast.

Dad picked me up at 7:30 am to head over to Mercer Island. We joked that it was like back when I was in high school and he and I would be up early on the weekends driving to who knows where to get to a basketball tournament! When we got to Mercer Island the traffic at the 77th Ave SE exit was backed up onto the highway! It took about 10-15 minutes but eventually we made our way into one of the race parking lots. I got myself organized at the car and then Dad and I walked about 10 minutes to the community center. I picked up my bib and chip, waited in a longish porta potty line and then Dad and I made our way over to the start. I lined up between the 8:00 and 9:00 min/mile pace signs and did some quick stretches before the gun went off.

The plan

I didn’t have much of a plan coming into this race. This was my eight official half marathon so I wasn’t too nervous about finishing. I just wanted to push myself and see what I could do without putting a lot of pressure on myself to get a PB or anything. Honestly, going into the race I was feeling good about my training but I wasn’t feeling like I was in PB form. I’ve been having problems with tight hamstrings and I wasn’t sure how that was going to affect me.

The Race

I really didn’t want to go out too hard and luckily the course was so congested in the first mile that this wasn’t a problem. I missed the first mile marker but averaged 8:42 over the first two miles. I was feeling OK early on in the race but at the same time I knew that dropping down to 8:23 (the pace for a 1:50:00 finish, my dream goal) just was not going to happen. Instead I decided to just run hard and see what would happen. There were a lot of winding turns along the east side of the island during the first 6 miles. I tried to run the tangents and avoid road sections with a steep camber but they really started to get annoying.  I took my first walk break at 35 minutes during the fifth mile. We were running on one lane of E Mercer Way and the course was surprisingly congested. The density of runners didn’t impede me in any way but there were a lot of people around.

I was feeling OK, but not super, as we hit the bottom of the island and started heading back north. I knew the second half of the course was hillier than the first but since I hadn’t memorized the elevation chart I didn’t exactly know when the hills would come. We covered a number of small rolling hills which I felt that I handled reasonably well. At this point I’d decided that 8:40 min/mile would be a good target pace for me but I couldn’t quite get down there. Miles 7 and 8 were both done in 8:46. I was feeling my hamstrings/butt musles fatigue already. I wouldn’t say they really hurt but, as per usual, my legs were more tired than my lungs. I took my only gel of the race during a walk break at the 1:10 mark. This made my mile 9 come in at 9:02 which didn’t make me too happy. The highest point on the course came during the tenth mile which was also slow at 9:00. Hitting mile 10 means that the finish line is “just a 5K away” and I rode the downhills hard in this mile to come in at 8:27.

The biggest hill came during the twelfth mile and it was a beast. I’m sure it seemed worse because I was tired but it brought most of the runners near me to a walk. I only let myself walk for about 50 steps at one point and otherwise pushed myself up it. Then I tried to push through the last 1.1 miles but I was beat. There was a short incline just before the finish line that I didn’t very much appreciate. Fortunately there were lots of people lining the course and the cheering really helped in the last few hundred meters.

Post Race

I crossed the finish line in a chip time of 1:56:02. I immediately met up with Dad, Alli, Tim and Matt. My legs were shot but the rest of me felt OK within a few minutes. I ate a banana and half a bagel and then we started walking back to the car. I was quickly getting cold and all my warm clothes were in the trunk. Dad, Matt and I went out for a post race brunch at the Rusty Pelican in Wallingford. Usually I’m a sweet food brunch kind of girl but for some reason today I was craving savory so I had a veggie and eggs scrambler with potatoes and toast. Oh and of course coffee. We spent the rest of the day watching NCAA basketball on TV!

Final Thoughts

I really upped the speedwork and tempo runs during this training cycle so part of me is disapointed that I didn’t see that pay off with a faster finish time. I’m starting to think that doing both speedwork and a tempo run each week might just be too much for my legs. In the end though I’m pleased with my race result because I feel as though I gave pretty much everything I could on race morning and that’s all I can ask of myself.

Data

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                 Cumulative  Cumulative  Average
Mile     Split      Time        Pace       HR
------------------------------------------------
  1     08:42.3   0:08:42.3   08:42.3    179
  2     08:42.3   0:17:24.6   08:42.3    180
  3     08:22.3   0:25:46.9   08:35.6    185
  4     08:36.4   0:34:23.3   08:35.8    185
  5     08:50.7   0:43:14.0   08:38.8    183
  6     08:51.7   0:52:05.7   08:41.0    184
  7     08:46.0   1:00:51.8   08:41.7    183
  8     08:45.9   1:09:37.7   08:42.2    180
  9     09:01.6   1:18:39.3   08:44.4    180
 10     09:00.2   1:27:39.5   08:45.9    180
 11     08:27.2   1:36:06.6   08:44.2    176
 12     09:03.0   1:45:09.7   08:45.8    175
 13.1   10:52.3   1:56:02.0   08:51.4    178
------------------------------------------------
Total 1:56:02.0                          180
------------------------------------------------
Overall place: 820/1620 (49th percentile)
Gender place: 276/798 (65th percentile)
Division place: 61/144 (57th percentile)
[places are based on chip time and do not include walkers]

1:56:02

I had a decent run on a tough course. The complete results are here. I’ll post my full race report in a few days.