Sunday, March 4, 2012

Race Report- Gasparilla Half Marathon

Race report: 03/04/2012 06:00
Vitals-
Total time: 1:41:57
Distace: 13.1 miles
Avg pace: 07:43 minute/mile
Avg HR: 167 bpm
Place: division- 35; overall 386/4547; top 10%

How it went down:
After my triathlon yesterday, we headed back to the house to unload, get cleaned up and wait for Josh and Jenny to pick us up. We got to Tampa and enjoyed a nice expo and checked into our hotel to enjoy a little nap. The hotel was located pretty much across the street from International Plaza and we decided to have dinner at Blue Martini and take advantage of their happy hour. Half off all drinks and the food menu. How appropriate for our half marathon today. We got back to the hotel after walking around the mall just a bit around 19:45 to wind down for the evening. What old farts we are.
04:00 the alarms started as we were set to leave by 10 to 05:00. It was a quick car ride to the start/finish area and Jenny found a parking garage a few blocks from where we needed to be. As we were walking over, the skies opened up and 20-30 mph winds were accompanied by torrential downpour. The rain was coming down sideways. We sought shelter inside the convention center as well as to unload some weight. After our duties were completed, we headed out towards the start finish with a promising sign that the rain was over. We all finagled our way towards the front group as there were over 4700 people running this AM. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long before the actual start of the race. Just a few seconds after 06:00 and the sound went off.
My plan was to stay with Josh. Our plan was to keep it about 8:15 pace for the 1st 5 miles, then 7:45 for the second 5 miles and then finish the last 5km with whatever we had left. The first mile pace was 8:13- right on target. However the next 4 miles, we were down to 8:00 pace.
Once we hit mile 5, we increased the pace down to 07:46. Again right on target. However the next few miles we drop the pace down again to around 7:30. Around mile 10, I was still with Josh having him pace me, however I could feel the tempo in my legs and told Josh to go ahead at his own temp and finish strong. I stayed around 7:25-7:30 for the last 5km. My legs were starting to feel really sore and the back of the right shoe was really hitting into my Achilles. However, I pushing at around sub 7 for the last .3 mile and stopped the clock for a total time of 1:41:57.
I grabbed a heat foil wrap and met up with josh who finished at 1:41:06. I then headed back to the finish line and waited for Desiree to come in and cheer her on. She stopped the clock at 1:55:51. Yay! A great run for her as she was plagued with sickness and some foot discomfort over the past 3-4 weeks. We grabbed our awesome finisher medals and headed back to the car. I was moving slow and bending over to pick up a dropped water bottle was painful. I legs were very sore- calves, hamstrings, IT bands…
We were ahead of schedule to check out and decided enjoyed a yummy breakfast at ihop. Then back home. Desiree and I had massages scheduled once we go home but changed our schedule just a bit given as the time would alot us to make it to noon mass at Blessed Sacrament. We dropped out bags into the house and hopped in the car to make it just in the knick of time.
Once we got back home, I hopped onto the trainer to spin the legs for about 20 mins as we waited for Lisa to come and enjoy our massages.
I felt like I had a great race. I wasn’t really nervous and what helped was having Josh and our plan. I felt that it was well executed even if we did push ahead of our targeted pace. We were able to stay consistent. Also, up until this point, the furthest I had for distance was 10 miles. Now I’m really hurting trying to recover and get food back into me.
Special thanks to Jenny Malcolm for making this experience awesome and for the support. She chauffeured us around and was a great spectator when the weather was more than less then ideal.
I’m not taking a couple days off before heading back to the training.

No comments:

Post a Comment