Blog of a Middle Aged Athlete

Back in February, I had been eying the Big D marathon as my last legitimate attempt to qualify for Boston if I failed to do so at Cowtown.  I knew I was going to have to be in Dallas anyway for a family get-together, so it was a logical race to pick before the local marathon racing season was over.  Fortunately, I “took care of business” in Ft. Worth, so I didn’t need Big D to qualify.  However, I still had to be in Dallas, so why not run the mini?

The race course was a loop course that started and finished at the Cotton Bowl on Dallas’ east side.  This would only be my second half marathon since I started running marathons, so I was kind of excited to see what I could accomplish here.  My recovery/training had been going OK for the last few weeks, but the temperatures had been rising and my runs were becoming more difficult.  A few days before the race, I checked out last year’s results, and found that if I ran a PR (previous PR was 1:35), I had a chance to place in my age group, something I had only done once before at a much smaller race (Frankenthon 2009).

Race morning, I drove down to The Cotton Bowl with my wife, daughter and mother, who were all going to run the 5k.  The weather was OK, but not great.  The temperature was around 60 degrees with about 75% humidity.   Since this was not a wave start, I made sure I was near the front (Aside:  The race website said even though there was chip timing, age group awards would be determined by gun/clock time.  Anyone concerned with the awards should start in the first 20 rows.  This would become relevant later.)

Just before the start, I saw my friend Frank, who was running the full marathon, and his brother in law, who was trying to qualify for Boston.  When he saw me, the first words out of Frank’s mouth were, “Your bib is the wrong color,” pointing out that I was only running the half, not the full.  Ha Ha.  Frank is a much younger and faster than I, so I told him I would try to keep up with him until the half/full split at mile 4, a strategy that almost killed me!

My initial thought was that I would strategically run this race like I ran my last marathon.  First 5 miles, I would relax and loosen up, the next 5 miles, I would press it and get my overall pace down, and the final 3.1 miles I would finish with whatever I had left.  However, after following Frank for the first few miles, I realized I was running 7 minute miles, a pace I doubt I could improve on, or even maintain during the second half of the race.   According to the Garmin, I ran my first 5.19 miles at a 7:01 pace.  Uh Oh!

There was no elevation chart on the website for the half course, so I really had no idea what the course was like.  After looking at my Garmin data, I can now see there was some significant “hillage” from mile 5.5 to mile 7.75.  My pace from 5.19 to mile 8.75 slowed to 7:21/mile, and I thought I was beginning to crash and burn.  I was sweating a ton as the humidity was taking its toll.  It was at this point something beautiful happened.  The course began going downhill, and my pace quickened.  I began passing a few runners that had spent their energy on the aforementioned hills.

I know this sounds cocky, buy something happened to me here that has not happened much in previous races.  I tend to be an even negative split runner, meaning I run the last half of the race faster than the first half.  When a runner does this, they tend to pass a lot of people, and they don’t get passed by many.  However, during the last 2-3 miles of this race, despite the fact that I was passing a few people, I was getting passed by just as many!  This is not supposed to happen to me.  I will tell you that this affected my psyche a little.  But I trudged on.

When I hit the 12 mile mark, I hit the “lap” button one last time on my watch to see how I could do.  I saw someone ahead of me that I was even with at mile 4, so I thought I would try to catch her.  I managed to catch her during the last 100 yards, but once I got even with her, she sped up and kept pace with me.  I finished with a 6:53 mile and an overall time of 1:34:02.  A PR!

After a few shaky moments where I thought I was going to throw up, I was reunited with my family and we walked inside to get some recovery food and drink.  When they posted the results on a wall, I saw my name.  32 place overall (out of over 2000 finishers) and 3rd in my age group (40-44).  I was given a nice little trophy and my Mom, wife and daughter were very proud!

When I got home later that day, I looked at the results again.  I had actually been in 4th place by chip time, but 3rd by gun/clock time.  This made me feel a little weird about my award, but I got over it quickly!