Back to the the topic, I ran the Everett half marathon this morning, there were too many excuses that I could've just skipped and slept in this morning. Besides the neck injury, I am also starting a new cold the last couple days. In additional, we went to Vancouver yesterday and didn't came back until late last night. Also, I was not able to sleep well, either due to the nerve to the race, or the neck pain, or unable to breath, or just all of the above.
I fell asleep eventually, but it was very light. When the alarm went off this morning, before giving myself any excuses, I just jumped out of bed and get ready for the run.
Parking was a mess, I ended up parked about half mile south of the start/finish line, which is actually good so that I can run over and warm up at the same time.
The Garmin watch freaked me out a bit! As I was pressing it while running over it was unresponsive! I kept trying and trying; eventually I was able to reboot it. I don't know, it just feels that a run doesn't even count without Garmin these days.
While I was preparing last night, I read that they would have pacer for the race. For some reasons, I have never used a pacer before, don't ask me why, I just never thought about it, and never used it before but I decided to tried it this morning. My previous PR from Seattle half last year was at a 8:17 pace, which was about 1:49:42 (per Garmin). I was debating if I would want to start with the 1:50 group, or the 1:45 group. I finally decided to start with the 1:50 group, which would let me start "easy", and if I feel good later on I can push and try to negative split. All these were theory given that I wasn't healthy.
I was glad that I chose the 1:50, the first couple miles was very uneventful, even the hill climb wasn't that painful! Being able to just follow somebody without thinking about how fast i should run, and do math to calculate how much time I have run, how much time I have left, how fast I am going, how many miles to go, etc etc... it's just so much easy. I just speed up if they are ahead and vice versa.
My plan was to follow for 2/3 of the race, and start pushing for the last third if I feel good. However, I decided to go for it after 6 miles, which was a risk because I always seem to run too fast and blow up in races.
No doubt, it was way more painful starting mile 6, and my left side also started to hurt around mile 8, to mile 11. Thankfully it was finally gone after mile 11.
In the back of my mind, i knew that my PR was somewhere around the high 1:40s, but I don't remember the exactly time. I think I remember the pace was something about 8:1x/mile. The last couple miles was purely mental struggle. I lost count how many times I wanted to slow down and take a break, how many times I just wanted to start walking. However, looking at the watch and i told myself that I didn't have the margin and luxury to do so, and I will regret if I walked and ended up missing the 1:50 mark, so I just kept on pushing and pushing and pushing.
When I passed the finish line, I felt that I have gave it all out, there's nothing left in me (almost, but not really, lol...) and I looked at the watch, it says 1:47:55! I know that I broke the 1:50 goal. At that moment, I didn't remember what was my PR time. Now I just checked Garmin I am full of joy, tears in my eyes! I broke my PR for 5k, 10k, and half marathon @ 8:15 pace. and also ranked 13th in my age group.
I am so glad that I didn't slept in this morning, and I am looking forward to the next race.
