Healthy Human Race Half Marathon

Three weeks before the Twin Cities Marathon, I decided to do a tune-up race and run a half marathon. I'd done a few 5Ks in this training cycle, but I knew a half marathon would give me a more accurate gauge on how fast I could race a marathon.

The morning of the race I decided to ride my bike to the start to get in a little warmup and avoid having to mess with parking. With the days getting shorter, I had to dig through my bike stuff to find my headlight, and I ended up doing the first half of my half hour ride in the dark. 

The race started at 7 AM, and I got to the start with enough time to run a two mile warm up.

After the little jog, I got lined up and chatted with an old friend from a running club in the twin cities. 

The race started, and I settled into what I thought would be a good pace. After a couple miles, I checked my watch and noticed that I was running just a couple of seconds per mile slower than I had been planning.

I was able to pick up the pace a bit, and I felt like I was moving along at a challenging but somewhat comfortable pace. It was a pretty small field, and there were only a couple of people running close to me, and after around five miles I was running by myself other than one guy who was about 30 seconds behind me for most of the race.

The course was pretty flat and I enjoyed running through various parks and along the Zumbro River. The aid stations were adequately spaced, and I took water and Gatorade along with a few Pure Fuel Maple Syrup gels.

With a couple of miles left, I was feeling pretty good and was able to pick up the pace for the last couple miles. I ended up finishing in 1:27:07. My 5K of 19:06 gave me a VDOT equivalent time of 1:27:42, so I feel like my fitness has continued to improve during this training cycle.

Laura and the kids came for the finish of the race, and it was great having them cheer for me as I wrapped up the race.

Like I said, it was a small race, so the Healthy Human Race wasn't overly competitive, but I still felt good about finishing as the sixth place male and second in my age group. My 1:27 was the fastest I've run a half since running the Pensacola Beach Half Marathon in January of 2018, and almost 10 minutes faster than the last half marathon I raced, the Louisiana Half Marathon, in January of 2025.

So, I'm feeling like my training has gone well and I'm feeling optimistic about the Twin Cities Marathon in two weeks. I'll give a recap of my training for Twin Cities in my next post.