Hyannis Half marathon 2-22-09

This was the first real race of my season. One of my goals this year is to come into every race injury free. Well I’m happy to report that the nagging issues that have bugged me over the last year were non-existent on race day!! This is in large part from the great work of Dr Travis Hart over at VT Chiropractic and Sports Therapy. Thanks Travis!!! Today I'm a little tender but things are looking good on the injury front (knock on wood).

I drove down with Lindsay and my training partner Justin Ryea. Man the weather down on the Cape was beautiful. Sat was dry, sunny and 40+ degrees. Race morning was around 40 degrees and dry. Perfect. I couldn’t believe how big this race was. Much bigger than I thought. There were 4000+ runners between a full marathon, half and 10k.

Overall I’m happy with my performance. The fitness is obviously there but I did make some significant pacing mistakes that slowed me down 1- 2 minutes overall. This is an area for me that I have really struggled with, for most of my endurance sports career. If I‘m going to be good at Ironman as an athlete and as a coach I need to tame this pacing beast. As Lindsay said, I have too much heart on race day and not enough brain. I get so competitive that I don’t use my head and stick to my plan.

My plan was to run 6-6:05 first and second miles and then just hold that as long as possible and lift it in the last 3 miles if I felt good. Well I ended up running the first mile in 5:47. Deep down I knew I was not doing the right thing but I didn’t listen to it—big mistake. This season—I’m going to focus 100% on race day execution (nutrition, pacing, sticking to the plan, trusting it). The pacing part is really the missing link for me as I’ve made a lot of gains with fueling. My QT2 team mates / fellow coaches totally killed it today. They were all perfect examples of how proper pacing equates to running very fast. Tim Snow ended up winning the whole thing in 1:15, Jesse was 4th in 1:16, Cait Snow won for the women in 1:19 and Pat Wheeler went 1:19 as well. My buddy Justin also had a great day coming in 7th with a 1:17.

I cracked the top 20 with a 1:21:04 (2044 athletes in the half).

Here are my mile splits-

Mile 1 – 5:47
Mile 2- 5:45
Mile 3- 6:00
Mile 4- 6:07
Mile 5- 6:07
Mile 6- 6:05
Mile 7- 6:10
Mile 8- 6:20
Mile 9- 6:20
Mile 10- 6:20
Mile 11- 6:22
Mile 12- 6:20
Mile 13- 6:20

Link to results-

Results