I ran my second half-marathon in my life on Sunday, January 25th. I started out more quickly than in my previous marathon. There were several “waves” of runners, which meant more spread-out groups than at the Long Beach half-marathon.
I had started running with a group of people, mostly from my company but also living around San Diego. I’m the minority there, as all of the others in the group are Indian. During the long runs, running with a group really helps the time go by, especially since I realized I don’t need to use all of my concentration on my running form.
So on the day of the race, I started out the first three miles running with two of my friends Vijay and Anil. After the first three miles, feeling that the pace was a bit slow, I sped up a bit and lost them. I searched for the others in the group, but seeing that they were far ahead I tried to maintain a steady pace, hoping to reach my goal of 1:50:00. At around 7 miles into the race, having not seen the rest of my group yet, I sped up more seeing that I still had the energy. At 10 miles, I reached the fastest guy in our running group, Reddi. He was ahead of me for 10 miles of the race!
The day before the long run, I heard a talk by Dane Rauschenberg, who had made his goal running one marathon each weekend for 52 weeks in 2006. He met his goal, raised $44,000 for the charity of his choice, and went on to write a book about it. Seeing him on the course at mile 11 as I ran the half marathon (he was a pace leader for the full marathon), I thanked him for his talk and I was inspired to make a last-minute dash during the last two miles.
So now, the results! I had previously run:
Long Beach Half Marathon: 1:53:01 at 8:38/mile pace
And my new time was:
Carlsbad Half Marathon: 1:41:57 at 7:47/mile pace
I had beat my old half-marathon record by 11 minutes!
Of course, some of that must be attributed to not having to weave through a crowd of people at this race. Carlsbad human traffic, with the waves of runners and the separate marathon and half-marathon start times, was much more organized and controlled. In addition, the day was chilly (probably around 60-65 degrees) by the beach at 7:30AM, so I had a cold start but did not lose much water sweating.
Next up: La Jolla Half Marathon, April 25, 2009
