New P.R. at the Denver Rock 'n Roll Half-Marathon

I set my original P.R. (personal record) back in 2010 when I ran my very first half-marathon in New York. I'd put my name into the entrance lottery--there are too few slots and too many would-be runners for that race--figuring I probably wouldn't get in and was a little alarmed when I did. I'd thought it would be a good opportunity to get myself back into running again, but the longest I'd ever run was something in the neighborhood of 9 miles. Doing 13.1 seemed very intimidating. My training consisted of running around Central Park a few times a week until I could comfortably run 12 miles. I had no idea what kind of pace I should set, and so I just ran the race at what seemed like a challenging, but sustainable pace. I was elated to realize that my finish time was a thoroughly respectable 1 hour and 42 minutes.

This uninteresting photo is apparently the only one I have from my first half-marathon.

I have spent the last five years hoping to break that record but not really doing much to actually make it happen. This time, for my 11th (if I'm counting correctly) half-marathon, I decided that I wanted to take training a little more seriously. I incorporated interval work (hard repeats of shorter distances with breaks in between) and tempo runs (slightly less hard middle-distance runs with no breaks) into my regimen of longer, slower, distance runs. I followed the training plan outlined in my beloved book Run Less, Run Faster, and made sure my paces for each workout met the stipulations set by the book to run a race of 1:40, my new goal. I was confident in the book, but less confident, as the race drew nearer, that I'd done everything right. For one thing, the plan in the book is for 16 weeks of training, but I'd started with only 12 weeks to work with and so ended up cutting out four weeks in the middle. For another, our trip to Austria brought my training to a near-total halt; in two weeks there, I did only one long run.

Mary Ann, a very experienced older runner whom I see in running groups several times a week, assured me that I'd easily make my goal. So did Ed, who ran with me a few times leading up to the race. That gave me a little more confidence, but I was still feeling a little nervous.

My nervousness mounted when, about half an hour before the race on Sunday, my trusty GPS watch wouldn't start. (The blasted thing fired up today with no problem at all...) To meet my goal, I was going to have to stick to a certain pace, and that would be tough without the watch. Luckily, there was a 1:40 pace group in the corral behind me, so I figured I could go with them if worse came to worst. And I could use the clocks on the course to get a sense of how I was doing. But when I met up with the pace group, I didn't like their plan. They were going to take three miles to ease into race pace, and I didn't want to start that slowly. So when the gun went off, I left them behind, figuring I could always stay with them if they caught me.

From 2013, but it looked just like this on Sunday.

They didn't catch me, however. From the first few steps I felt strong, well-rested from my taper. I strided through the first mile comfortably, well ahead of the pace group (which was, admittedly, going about 20 second per mile more slowly than they should have been at that point), and looked up eagerly when I reached the mile marker for the clock. There wasn't one. There wasn't one at the two- or three-mile marker either. In fact, the only clocks on the course were at the starting and finish lines. Running blind, I knew only that I was ahead of the pace group. I was sure to meet my goal if I stayed ahead of them, but was I going at a pace I couldn't sustain?

At mile 4.5 or so, a girl I'd seen with the pace group loped up beside me. In a brief, breathless exchange, we agreed that we'd been frustrated by the pace group's slow start. Since she'd crossed the starting line at the same time I had and was wearing a working watch, she called off the mile splits for the next three miles. Each time I was amazed at how quickly I was going. I felt good, but I worried that I'd crash and burn at this pace. Around mile 7, she pulled ahead, and she ended up beating me handily. I doggedly held my pace as best I could.

It turns out that I was able to hold it pretty well. Instead of struggling to make it over the finish line at 1:40 as I'd hoped, I sailed through at 1:37:38, cutting a full 5 minutes off my previous P.R. There's no doubt in my mind that I could have gone faster, too, and I will know for next time that I don't need to be quite as conservative.

I was surprised and pleased by my time, and even more so by my results. Racing in Denver, it seems, is a very different ballgame than in ultra-competitive New York. I finished:

-10th out of 1,002 runners in my division (women 30-34)
-40th out of 5,089 women in the race
-240th out of 7,943 overall finishers

For comparison, the first place finisher ran 1:07:15 and the first woman finished in 1:20:57.

My time is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not all that fast, and I can't imagine I'd have ranked so well in my division had I run this race against competitors from New York. Still, I'm pleased with my time, and I know for certain I can do better. I put a lot of effort into my interval and tempo runs, but I can certainly run more times each week and increase my volume a lot, which will certainly improve my race time. I'm also rather pleased that I ran so quickly on a hilly course at altitude; I'll bet I could cut off some more time easily if I were to race at sea level. I'm eager to see how fast I can go, and will be looking for another half to enter soon.