The Dallas Running Club's Half-Marathon ("The Half") is one of the oldest half-marathons in the country, and also one of the 50 largest ones according to an article I saw in Runners World. The DRC Half hit its registration cap of 4,000 runners more than a week before race day and there were about another 400+ people running the 5K.I had to arrive early at Norbuck Park this morning to do race day packet pickup. Nice long-sleeve technical shirt and various samples and coupons in the bag. No time to go through that now, however. I jogged back to my car (and along the way ran into and said a quick hello to my new friend Serena - who I met last month on a flight back from India!) to get ready for the race.
The weather was already warming up so I decided to run shirtless - into the trunk it went. From the packet, I hooked the bib number to my race belt and attached the Chronotrack "D-Tag" chip to my shoe. A few most last-minute prep items - sunscreen, FuelBelt with 2 flasks of recovery drink powder (half-teaspoon of Glutamine and 2/3 scoop of Accelerade mix in each 8-oz container) and 2 flasks with water (backup/emergency hydration for the run), and reset my Garmin 305 and put on the heart rate monitor strap - and I was off.
As I recrossed Northwest Highway to get to the race site, I groaned at the long lines forming at the two sets (10-11 total) of portolets and thought to myself - that's all they have for a race with 5,000 people (plus volunteers). A helpful fellow runner pointed out that there was a huge bank of additional facilities near the finish line - and he was right - two rows of 25+ each. Looks like the Dallas Running Club and race organizers were prepared in this area.
I met a few fellow Fort Worth Runner's Club members before the race - just chatting and did a half-mile warm-up jog. After that I started heading over to the starting line to meet with Derek and Jarrod. Along the way, I ran into Lee and Fiona who were right at the front of the pack and ready to go. It's always nice to see familiar faces at these events.
The run itself went okay for me. The weather for today's race was deceptively hot - about 60 degrees at the start; 75 by the end of the race. And the humidity was approximately 70% as well. I had about an 8:30-8:35/mi pace (per GPS) through the first 8 miles. Miles 9-11 were slow and painful with the pace slowing to 9:30-9:45/mi at times. I tried to speed up for the last mile or so with limited success for an overall pace of 8:51/mi per GPS. During the last third of the run, my legs got really tight. (Thankfully) they never completely cramped up, but they did feel like heavy "cement legs" ... due to the warm weather, taking the entire week off from running, or both.
My official chip time was 1:57:40.64 for the 13.1 mile course (13.27 miles per GPS) - which is about 4 minutes slower than last year. The 8:59/mi pace was a lot slower than I would have liked, but it was still under 9:00/mi so not a total meltdown. 936th place out of 3,299 half-marathon finishers and 123rd out of 270 in my age group.
Although the weather was warmer than normal, I can't really use that as an excuse since many of my friends had personal records today. Derek and Jarrod finished only a minute behind me with their 6/1 run-walk strategy - I could have stayed with them and done the same time with less pain and suffering! After the race (and food tent :-), I ran into Fiona, who told me that she got second in the Masters and won $200! I missed Lee after the finish line, but he told me on the phone that he got 3rd (out of 250) in his age group - and I saw later in the results that he was 40th overall! Kim and Roberto also PRed and so did a few other FWRC runners. Congrats!
I was a little disappointed that the post-race food was pizza instead of burgers on the grill that they had last year, but it's understandable given that the number of runners was nearly double from 2007. Overall, a great day and a great race.
MotionBased stats: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7082171
Finally, the Dallas Morning News has a gallery of some nice race photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment