Provo City Half Marathon 5-7-11

So here we are, a full two weeks after this race and I am Finally getting around to writing a recap.  I know this has absolutely nothing to do with cycling, but I sometimes run too... As many of you know, I am planning on racing Ironman St George next May... in fact look at the top of this page and you will see a countdown to Ironman St George.  To prepare myself for this event, I decided that running a marathon would be a good thing to do to see how my body could handle such a long distance.  I signed up for the Provo City Marathon, then took a week or two off to let my legs recover from overworking them in January.  I decided to bump down to the half marathon hoping that I could knock out a 1:45:00 smashing my best time of 1:53:18 by over eight minutes.  Then I hired a coach.  Lora has shown me a lot of the ins and outs of training smarter.  One of those things is training at or just below lactate threshold, which is the point when lactic acid starts to build in the muscles faster than the body can get rid of it.  Anyway, upon analyzing my training, Lora came up with a number for me:  156... Yup... 156... Another thing Lora has introduced me to is heart rate training.  For all the non-elite athletes in my circle of readers, MY lactate threshold (according to Lora) is 156.  SO when my heart rate climbs above 156 beats per minute, I am above my lactate threshold, which can be bad for training.  So, I started to play with some numbers, I ran 6 miles and tried to hold a pace of less than 8 minutes per mile.  My heart rate steadily climbed and at about mile 4, reached 164 and stayed there until the end of my run.  Another day, I went 5 miles and tried to stay at 8 minutes 30 seconds per mile.  My heart rate stayed an even 145 for nearly the whole run.  SO despite my hopes of running 1:45:00 in the Provo Half Marathon (by the way, to run a half marathon in 1:45:00, you have to keep a pace of 8:00/miles the whole 13.1 miles) I knew I would have to stay somewhere above 8:00/mile but I could run faster than 8:30 per mile.  Then came race morning.  K Jo had decided to run the Marathon, so we had to be there EARLY... 6:15 early... The buses taking the marathon runners to the start line were leaving at 6:30, so K Jo had to be there before then.  My race didn't start until 8:00 so I got to hang out for an hour and a half until my race started.  Finally, the MC called racers to the line and I found the 1:50:00 pacer (the guy that was holding a sign indicating that he would run the race in 1:50:00) and saw that his pace was to be 8:24/mile... perfect.  The gun was fired (actually the countdown was started) and we were off. I hung with Landon (the 1:50:00 pacer) as we twisted and turned through the streets of Provo.  The mile markers we passed had humorous ad libs printed on them.  Mile 2: yup, this is only mile 2... Mile 3: if you were doing a 5K you would almost be done.  I didn't see signs for miles 4-9 but luckily, I had Landon who was running with a Garmin (GPS unit) that beeped at us every mile so I could measure my pace.  Just before the halfway point, we entered the blessed shade of the trees lining the Provo River Parkway

At the halfway point with Landon just behind me.

We continued on, emerging from the parkway into a small park and back onto the roads of Provo.  As I passed mile marker 10 I read: feeling fine, cause I can't feel anything.  At this point, the course rejoins itself and we started to see the marathoners.  I offered encouragement to those that I saw and kept an eye out for my little wife, but did net see her.  Perhaps she had already passed.  I had become dependent on Landon's Garmin as I don't remember seeing a sign for mile 11 and just before mile 12, Landon told me to press on at my current pace, as he would slow down to hit the 1:50:00 mark.  I started to push myself a bit, then looked at my watch to see 9:00... oops, missed the mile marker.  I hit the lap button to record a 9:04 for mile 12.  We were now headed back to the start/finish line and up the bridge on University Ave that crosses the train tracks.  Shortly before this, my watch started beeping at me telling me my heart rate had climbed above 156.  I didn't care.  I had achieved  my goal of keeping my heart rate below my lactate threshold for 12 of the 13.1 miles of this race... It was time to finish strong.  I pushed towards the finish chute and saw the clock ticking away 1:49:30, 1:49:31, 1:49:32.  I wanted to finish before 1:50:00, so I kicked it into high gear with all that I had left, and finished at a solid 1:49:42.  Well ahead of my previous personal record of 1:53:18.

Yes, the guy behind me IS wearing jeans and skater shoes.

I found K Jo in the finishing chute waiting patiently for me to finish.  She had run 13 miles and made it to the start of the half marathon and decided that it was too hot to run another 13.2 miles.  I was glad to see her.  I picked up my medal, and gave up my timing chip, then we scarfed down some oranges, drank some water and headed back to the car.  I pulled off my shoes and quite literally peeled off my socks to discover that one of my toenails had ripped a tiny hole in one of my toes.  No pain though so hooray.

I was pretty happy with my performance and I had accomplished my goal... Ironman, here I come... Thanks for reading.