Saturday, September 24, 2011

Graniteman 1/2 Marathon Pace Report

Whoops, it's been over a month since I've posted. After Ragnar things got crazy--school started and I went from having no work to having lots of work. My running has been mostly uneventful and my mileage has gone way down. It's been hard to get in runs with school starting along with doing some volunteering. I think once I get into more of a routine I'll get a little better at the miles and the blog posts.

Two weeks ago Laura, Jared and I headed up to Sauk Rapids for the Graniteman 1/2 Marathon. Jared and I paced and Laura ran with one of her friends who happened to be pacing the two hour group.

The night before we went to a bar and grill for dinner and got an atypical pre-run meal. Laura had some chicken tenders, Jared had a burger, and I had a fish sandwich. Jared and I also split an order of chicken wings. We then headed to the hotel the Minnesota Pacers had arranged for us--it was a pretty nice hotel and we had a suite. I felt like a real celebrity getting put up in a hotel the night before the race.

The morning of the race Jared and I put in a few miles beforehand. Jared's training for the Twin Cities Marathon and I just wanted a few more miles. The race started and I had a pretty good group start out with me--maybe 10 or so. They stayed with me through 4 or 5 miles and then most of them fell back. One guy with me was pretty chatty but besides that it was definitely the quietest group of runners I've run with. I've noticed the 1:35 group is the quietest group of all the paces I've done but this race really only one guy talked with me.

I paced pretty well--no miles were more than 10 seconds off and I finished at 1:34:55. The race was well-run other than the Heed at the water stops. That stuff is extra gross and I accidentally grabbed some at one of the water stops. I'm pretty sure I threw up in my mouth a little bit. Give me any flavor of Gatorade or Powerade--anything besides Heed.

Last weekend Laura and I ran in the MN Running Wild track meet. It was a pretty good time with an 800m, relays of 4 X 400m, 4 X 100m, and 4 X 200m, and ended in the beer mile. I'll recap the races in another post.