ATL Turkey Day Half Marathon Report II

Jay beat me to the punch...

I'm in full-on Goofy training right now and fitting in a half marathon at this point makes sense as a sortof extra long tempo run.  So that's how I approached this race.  I've been training primarily in two ways, the treadmill, and a flat-as-a-pancake greenway where I do my long runs.  i.e., no hills in my training.  I've run a bunch of races in downtown Atlanta, so I knew exactly what I was getting into with the hills, and I wasn't looking forward to them.  I've only run two stand alone half marathon races in the past, the first was this race (but a very different course) two years ago, and the first half of the goofy last year.  So my PR was 1:53 and change.  My goal for the race yesterday was to PR, and my super secret goal was to break 1:50.

Got up early, did breakfast and was out the door @ 4:45am, the drive was easy to Turner Field/Braves Stadium where the start and finish were located.  I was in corral B which started at 7:35 and i arrived at the parking lot closer to 5:45.  It was high 30's low 40's at that time and I hit the port-a-john (no line when you are extra early!) and then hunkered down in the car with the heat blasting.  I set my phone alarm and took a nap until 6:45 or so and then wandered off to see if I could catch Paul and Jay before the race.  I didn't find either of them but I did find Paul's wife and kids and chatted with them a bit prior to heading into the corral.  Once in the corral I found a co-worker who has really put improved his running over the last 2 years, his goal was to break 2 hours in the race.  No gun, but they yelled "go", ha!  really, they yelled go and we were off.  My friend from work took off like a bat out of hell and I kept pace with him for the first couple of miles.  For this first time in years I was having problems with my compression gear and my top kept on rolling up which is super uncomfortable, so for the first 2 miles I was wrestling with my clothes until I generated some sweat that kept it in place.  That was unbelievably annoying and while I was messing with my clothes constantly re-tucking them in, I must have hit the start/stop button on my garmin and it shut off.  I noticed after my auto-lap didn't kick in when I passed the 2 mile marker and turned it back on.  So by mile 3 when i started getting metrics again, it was clear that my friend from work wa****ting a solid 8 min mile pace.  Whoa, way too fast for me and my goals (and I knew the hills were coming), so I backed off from him a bit but maintained just over an 8 min mile pace which after 4 or 5 miles allowed my goal to break 1:50 to creep into my head.  The first 6 or 7 miles were relatively flat, and then the hill****  I passed my friend around mile 7 and told him he was nuts to maintain this pace but congratulated him on making it that far that fast, I just hoped he didn't blow out the 2nd half with no energy.  The course wound it's way back and forth across the same couple of hills for the last 6 miles, I was able to maintain a sub-8:20 pace for every mile save one (8:23) and with 3 miles to go, felt that I had the 1:50 in the bag if I just don't blow it.  Turns out the last 3 miles had the worst hills.  Basically it was an anaerobic affair up the hills with some active recovery going down, but the downhills were starting to hurt as much as the uphills.  I was trying to maintain pace going up as much as I could and this just physically and mentally drains you.  I gutted out the last 3 with lots of mantras and yelling at myself internally, with the light at the end of the tunnel being not only hitting my secret goal, but maybe killing it and getting into 1:48.  The worst hill is the one right next to the capital building before you turn onto the final stretch, that one hurt more than i want to admit to myself, so much that the little incline over the highway right after seemed like mt. everest.  we ran under the olympic rings and i sprinted in (well as fast i could muster at any rate).   since my garmin was off, i was doing math on the race clock and i was pretty sure i hit somewhere in the 1:48 to 1:49 range (confirmed later when they posted results, final time was 1:48:07).  I was more than happy, this was pretty unexpected.  I can honestly say that i hit that time because my friend from work was my rabbit for the first couple of miles and got it in my head that i could possibly maintain the pace for the rest of the race.  He ended up coming in @ 1:55 killing his PR from last year by 10 minutes.  I was really impressed.  After that, i limped to the car and headed home to get my grub on :)

Hope everybody had a happy turkey day!

 Awesome Bill. Sounds like you worked the course very nicely. Oh by the way, it will probably be the only thing I beat you too the pucnh on with your speed.

Impressive. I didn't know there were any hills in Atlanta, but i sounds like you knocked them out.  That is one fast pace. Enjoy your new PR.

Wow! What a race! those hills, that is an incredible time with having to climb hills! Congrats Bill, bask in it, you earned it!

Machine!!!