Heart and Sole Half Marathon 8/22/2009

A quick review of last week : Wednesday night I was doing speedwork with Marsha, Jeannine, Charles, Janet and Dan D. late. I was trying to push Jeannine a little on her last 800 when I turned around and ran backwards, big mistake I guess as after that I had a weird feeling in my lower left leg. Thursday I went to see doc. Joe and he did his thing and said I could run on it so Dan D. and I ran 9 miles of trails in Reagan that night, again it hurt at the end mostly when we hit the pavement. I took Friday off with Saturday being the Heart and Sole 1/2. A big group of us went down together and I decided I was not going to push the pace, Rachel was also there and was going for a 1:45 half marathon so I ran up behind her and we ended up running ALMOST the the entire race together. We caught up with Dan Horvath and the 3 of us were together for quite some time. If you want to run a 1:45 half marathon you run an 8 minute pace so in miles 2, 3, 4 and 5 Rachel tells me we are going a little fast and we were just under a 8 minute pace through those miles then things changed, all of a sudden we start going faster and faster and passing lots of people. I think Rachel must have slipped a few energy gels in when I wasn't watching. At mile 10 I remember Rachel saying if we can run a 30 minute 5k we'd be at her time (yeah right) the last few miles were down hill and we were running near my 5k pace it seemed, around mile 11 we pass a girl I've seen at a lot of races and she looks up and sees Rachel and about lets out a gasp. This girl attempts to keep up for a brief second but soon realizes we were going to fast for her. Nearing mile 12 I tell Rachel to keep it up and I fall back, she tried to coax me to keep up but I was starting to feel the leg and had a small side stitch. I relied on Rachels watch most of the day and was now thinking I would really like to break 1:40 but wasn't sure where I was coming into the finish line, as I get close enough to see the clock I was a little surpised to see my time at 1:35 and change and Rachel finished almost a minute before me with a great new pr of 1:34. Her 1:45 half had disappeared in the second half of the race. I was 2 minutes from my pr and we ran easy the 1st half but it sure was nice to feel so strong in the last half and do so well. After I was done I drank a water and ate a bagel then went out to run Marsha and Charles in but the short break made my leg hurt even more and I was pretty much done for the day. The rest of the Medina group was going out for 8 more miles but I decided to stay at the truck and rest while they ran. A good decision but I should have gone because they lost Roseanne, Charles finally found her and we were on our way home. One more funny moment was the girl we passed late in the race came up to Rachel afterwards and says "where did you come from" , it was funny because she was so shocked when we passed her.