Race Report - Cloud Half Marathon

Saturday was the Cloud Snapple Half Marathon. As mentioned in an earlier post, my goal for this race was to run at 8m/mish and not push it too hard. This was a training run for me and not an all out race.

The race was set to start at 9am along the C&O towpath with a start line at the Carderock recreation center. Since I had never been there before, and it was suppose to take me 45 minutes to get there, I decided to leave my house at 7:10am, so that I could pick up my packet and timing chip. The weather for the day was suppose to be cold and snow. Earlier in the week it was suppose to snow Friday night, but as of Saturday morning the snow was not suppose to come until after lunch.

I got to the Recreation center about 8:00ish, and the Cloud people were setting up the tables for packet pickup. I sat in the car listening to the radio for a second, and the weather report was a high of about 20F. At 8:00am it was about 18F and felt like 10F. I went to pick up my packet and timing chip, and for the first time that day I noticed how cold it was. Pretty frigid. Got my packet and jumped back into my warm car. Since I got there so early, I got a prime parking spot, about 50ft from packet pickup and about 100 feet from the start line.

At about 8:30m I started to get antsy, so I put on my hat and gloves and took off for a mile warmup. I ran down the recreation center road to the last parking lot, turned around and ran back. I'm sure glad I got there early, it was have sucked to park that far away. By the time I got back to my car, my hands were freezing. I knew I had to protect them better.

At 8:45am, I headed down to the startline. The towpath is not wide and there were about 350 people at the race. Needless to say, the start was crowded. I stood next to a group that talked about running 9m/m. I decided to move a bit closer to the front.

As I was adjusting my Garmin, I heard what I thought was the national anthem. I turned to the guy next to me and asked him. He just kinda shrugged as I noticed the IPOD earbuds in his ears. After some inaudible announcement, a small buzzer sounded that I guessed was the start of the race. Being in the middle of the pack, I did not move. About 1 minute later we began moving and when I crossed the timer mats, I hit the timer on my Garmin and we were off.

Mile 1-3 - These miles were pretty laid back. I was passing lots of folks as I try and find someone at my pace. About mile two I catch up to a blonde gal and a guy with earbuds (different guy). They seemed to be on about a 7:45m/m pace. I settled in. The first aid station was at 2 miles. I passed it. Wind was kinda chilly, but the running felt easy. The towpath had a lot of sticks, rocks and ruts, so I had to watch where I was going. My times:

Mile 1 -7:58
Mile 2 - 7:40
Mile 3- 7:37

Mile 4-6.5 - By mile 4 it had started to snow just a little bit. I left the blonde, who had slowed down a bit, but kept pace with the earbuds guy. By mile 5, the snow had picked up quite a bit and the towpath started to get slippery. A guy slipped and fell in front of me, but recovered and kept running. It was at this point, that the lead running passed me going the other way. For a second I had the thought of turning around and start running back, who would know?? I figured someone would turn me in so I kept running. Mile 6 aid station had lots of workers, but again I zipped by. The turn around was just a cone in the middle of the towpath. Earbud guy did not see or hear the two girls yelling "half was done, turn here" and he kept going. As I turned around, the girls ran after earbud guy and told him to turn. I slowed and yelled back, "you put in more milage!!", to which he said "You think they'll give me credit?" I was now ahead of earbud guy. My times:

Mile 4-7:40
Mile 5 - 7:29
Mile 6 - 7:33
Front split - 49 min 43 sec

Mile 7-10 - Earbud guy passed my about mile 7, and I kept up with the guy that slipped earlier for a while. Snow was coming down real hard now. It kept getting in my eyes. In fact, several times I had to wipe icicles off my eyelashes. It was really annoying. But I was not hot or cold, just right. If my face got cold, I lifted my neck warmer over my mouth for a few seconds and I felt better. It was also getting harder to see the towpath. by about mile 9 or 10 there had to be 2 inches of snow on the path. This made it very hard to see the ruts and foliage on the path. Stepped in several ruts and was lucky not to twist an ankle. My times:

Mile 7 -7:30
Mile 8 -7:32
Mile 9 -7:37
Mile 10 - 7:41

Mile 11 to finish - Was in the zone, running smooth. Had to keep watch of the ground, which was even more snow covered. Passed a bunch of towpath hikers at the mile 11 aid station. They asked how much we were running, and seemed impressed with the distance in this weather. Also at mile 11, I passed earbud guy, who was clearly beginning to struggle and ran alone for the remainder of the race. Several people yelled good job as I passed them, but I really did not feel I was speeding up, only keeping pace. By 12.3ish I noticed my left knee started hurting. The same IT band issue. I considered stopping to stretch, but decided not to since I was close to the finish. I pushed through and finished in 1hr 40min. My knee was hurting a bit at the end, but stopped hurting as soon as I stopped. My times:

Mile 11 -7:41
Mile 12 -7:41
Mile 13 -7:45
0.15 mile - 1:04

Back half split - 50min 17 sec - only 34 seconds slower than the first half.

As I finished, I went into the shoot, got my metal, and they needed me to give back my timing chip. I struggled with my laces, which were double knotted, a nice volunteer held me get my chip off. I went and got water and some cold pizza. As I walked to cool down, I talked to a guy who finished in 1:31. He also complained about the ruts, etc. Soon I noticed my hands were freezing since the sweat from my gloves was beginning to freeze. I grabbed another piece of pizza, and headed for my car. There was at least 3inches of snow on my car, which I hurriedly brushed off and headed home.

Overall, it was a good training race. Weather kinda sucked, but the race was well organized, people were nice and numbers were small. There really was no spectators, which was the only real down side. I'd do it again. I'm a bit worried about my knee in the long distances, but I'll talk about that in a later post.

My "official" numbers

57 out of 332
16 out of 58 in age group (40-49)
Official time 1:40:28