Four Bridges: My First Half Marathon

After all the training and time off to recover from the hamstring injury, it was finally time for the Four Bridges Half Marathon. The questions rattling around in my brain would be answered. Would I be able to run the full 13.1 miles having only done a long run of 11 miles in my training? Would my hamstring issues hamper the run or would I make it the full distance without any issues?

The weather was good for running a half marathon: cool, but not too cool. There were a lot of runners there (not surprising, as there were a lot of people at packet pickup the previous day). The runner were divided into 3 waves, and I (also not surprising) was part of the final wave. The waves were spaced 5 minutes apart, and we got off on time at 8:10.

As I tend to, I started off a touch fast. I kept telling myself to slow it down, but I'm not sure that I really followed through on that. As has been becoming common for me, my second mile was faster than the first (although just by five seconds). I ran each of the first seven miles in less than ten minutes leading me to believe that I'd beat an overall average of 10 minutes per mile. I finished the eighth mile in 10:04, but as I saw the "8 Mile" sign, I started to feel a bit of stress in my right hamstring.

At this point, the hamstring was mostly just a minor annoyance, and I completed the ninth mile in 10:02. Things got a bit more worrisome in the tenth mile, and I started to mentally calculate how much farther I'd have to run before I could walk the rest of the way and still make the 2:45 cutoff.

When I hit the tenth mile marker, I took a more positive attitude and just keep repeating "three miles to go" in my head (thankfully at this point, I was pretty worn out and was able to stay mentally occupied without going crazy by doing this). I gave up another 23 seconds on the 11th mile (I ran it in 10:23 compared to the desired 10:00). My 12th and 13th miles both fell off from pace, but I'm glad to say taht I didn't stop and walk at any point. When I crossed the finish line at around 2:11:30, I knew I didn't hit my goal but was glad that I got close.

Based on the unofficial results, I missed my 10 minutes per mile goal by 29 seconds:

It is interesting to note that my Garmin watch told a slightly different story regarding my pace (the timings from above were based on the Garmin): the showed my overall pace at 9:56 but that I had ran 13.25 miles (0.15 miles beyond the expected 13.1).

So what's my take-away from this? For 5Ks and 10Ks, it may not matter as much how wide I take corners, but over the course of a half marathon, it certainly does. If I had cut off just 1/3 of the extra, I would have finished just under 2:11 and hit my goal. Definitely something for me to keep in mind if I'm insane enough to tackle another half marathon (which I likely will).

And so now, I'm left with different questions. The aforementioned, am I insane enough to do this again as well as when will my muscles recover from this one?