The leaders at 2.5 miles in...all by themselves already.
All righty, then!
If you're just looking for the results for the Corvallis Half, here they are.
And if you need a race review, well hey, I've got one of those too.
So waking up this morning, and seeing that it was 38 stinking degrees! did not make me that happy, especially since it was raining as well. It had all the makings of a cold, wet day. Eek.
So I headed to OSU for the start and wandered over to my office to prepare in the indoor warmth. Advantage: me. I thought about wearing my new Mizuno running shoes for the race, but my longest run in them so far was about 4 miles and I just couldn't pull the trigger. So I ended up wearing my old Nike Pegasus Trail shoes - a shoe that I've never been super happy with, but one that I've used on 13+ mile runs.
I stayed in the warmth of my office and just ran up and down the hall a few times to warm up. At about 15 minutes before the start, I headed out and jogged over to the start line - about a 100 yards from my office. Nice.
With very little preamble, we had a 3-2-1 countdown and were off. The weather actually wasn't too bad at that point; no rain and cold, but not horrible. I wore a long sleeve tech shirt and gloves (the gloves as much to wipe my nose as anything else...hayfever).
I hit the first two miles at:
-7:59 / mile one
-7:52 / mile two
That's me in the backwards OSU hat, keeping the non-existent sunshine off my easily-burned head.
When I ran the Corvallis Half last year, and set my PR, I was running about a 7:50 pace. This year, however, I'm about 10 pounds heavier (I'm working on it) and knew I didn't have much of a chance of a PR. Which is probably OK, since I didn't go out too fast like I usually do...and didn't suffer at the end of the race like I usually do.
At the water stop at 2.5 miles in, I said "hi" to Carson and her Girls on the Run buds.
The next three miles were a touch up and down as we ran through the Bald Hill area and my splits looked like this:
-8:00 / mile three
-8:15 / mile four
-8:21 / mile five
I was actually feeling pretty good. I wasn't trying to push it at all - I didn't think I had the fitness for that - just keeping within myself and trying to stay steady.
We hit a nice downhill on the next couple miles as we came out of the park and onto Oak Creek:
-8:04 / mile six
-8:02 / mile seven
Then the uphill as we turned onto 53rd to head to Walnut. Definitely the toughest section of the course. Not too steep, but a fairly long, steady climb. Takes some concentration here to keep pace. My slowest mile:
-8:35 / mile eight
Then the nice downhill right afterward:
-7:58 / mile nine
-8:04 / mile ten
I was starting to wear down a little bit here, but still felt pretty good. Of course, then a woman that had to be five or six months pregnant went by me pretty easily. That's not good for the old ego.
-8:18 / mile eleven
-8:26 / mile twelve
You can always tell the first timers on the course right about here. Reser Stadium is right there in front of you and you can see a few people speed up, thinking they're coming in for a landing. Sorry, but then they turn you back away from Reser for a mile+ trip around the campus for a bit. I saw at least two guys stop and walk as soon as we turned away from the Stadium.
Strangely, I was starting to get cold here again, after warming up during the middle miles of the race. I guess I should have been running faster.
I speeded up just a touch as I started to smell the barn:
-8:17 / mile thirteen
-7:30 / last tenth
The finish in Reser is always fun, although I'm not sure how those football players run so fast on that turf. It's not that easy to run on.
So I came with a 1:46:54, about four minutes slower than my PR. Considering the shape I'm in, or not in, at the moment, I'm happy enough with that. That got me 272nd place out of 1487 overall, and 17th out of 67th in my age group. And 2nd, apparently, in the grouping of me and pregnant women. Well, I hope 2nd...it could be worse than that, I guess.
The shirt is actually better looking than the first two years and the finisher's medal was nicer-looking as well. Way to go, Tyler!
Now I need to figure out what races I'm doing for the rest of the year!
