2014 Cinco de Mayo Half Marathon -- 1:19:42

I am so pleased to break 1:20 in the half-marathon.  

And it is so satisfying to run negative splits.  

Two years ago I ran this same half-marathon in 1:21:30.  

Just like two years I run the first half of the race with a  pack, relying on the "metronome pace" of two elite female runners - this year the elite females being CNW's Lana and Kimber.   The pace felt so comfortable and we are such a supportive and friendly little band - encouraging one another, yelling out various splits, and promising to buy Lana a beer for pacing us.

I hate to leave them.  But when I saw my split  at the 7 mile mark was 43:15 I knew that Lana's pace was definitely not going to allow me to realize my dream of running 1:20.   And that this moment was probably my last chance in this race to make a move and get back under pace.  So I surged to catch up with some guy in a blue singlet (Pedro I learned later), who had passed our merry band several minutes earlier.   This surge left me breathing hard, and I was thinking that it would be painful and embarrassing if I ultimately fall off the pace and Lana, Kimber and Jordan overtake me again.  

But I just stayed with Pedro.  Thank goodness for Pedro.  I owe Pedro a beer too if I ever see him again, though I would surely not recognize him since I pretty much only saw him from the back (he did the real work, I just ran behind him). 

It felt like we were flying.  Picking up the pace from 6:10 per mile to 6:02 felt like a screaming fast increase in speed at that point in the run.  My splits (40:32 for the first 50% of half-marathon, and 39:10 for the second half may not seems like a big drop, but it felt huge.  

I finish 8th overall.  Cinco de Mayo is fairly competitive for a smallish event (but part of its attraction was having runners like Lana and Pedro to run with).  

The race (especially in retrospect) was an "A race" for me this year - I was kind-of, sort-of training for it -- to the extent that I really train for any particular thing, as I complain about in my previous blog post on my undisciplined spring training.  I was not sure that I would even make it to Seattle in time for Cinco de Mayo and did not actually register until the morning of the race.  I am glad I made and was able to clock a time under 80 minutes.  I still have hopes of getting my half-marathon back under 1:18, but for now I can focus on triathlons, aquathons, climbing, and shorter run distances.