Half-Marathon Day(s)

This week­end is the half-marathon point in out train­ing sched­ule. I’ll be run­ning the Bat­tle­field Half-Marathon in East­ern Hen­ri­co Coun­ty. Angela is reg­is­tered for this race as well, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, she has to work all week­end long. So, we are start­ing the first-annu­al Ange­la’s Birth­day Half-Marathon, sched­uled for Mon­day at 7:00 am. This will be a 13.1 mile tour of Rich­mond’s West End (now referred to by some as mid-town Rich­mond, due to the West­ern Sprawl that is Hen­ri­co and Goochland Counties).

So, in the span of two days, I will now have run a marathon. I’m either a very fool­ish per­son with no regard for my legs or a very lov­ing hus­band, will­ing to endure pain for my wife. I’m most like­ly a fair amount of both. At least I’ll have an extra day this week­end to recov­er from my foolishness.

My race on Sun­day morn­ing is a tra­di­tion­al half-marathon, with vol­un­teers man­ning water stops, signs mark­ing each pass­ing mile, and a timer at the fin­ish line to call out how I’ve done. Ange­la’s on the oth­er hand, is the two of us run­ning in a series of two-three mile loops cen­tered around my truck parked at a near­by intersection.

Preparing For The Race

Stretch­ing before the race.

Update 2005–9‑4: I fin­ished my race in 1:52:39, accord­ing to the RRRC web­site. My own num­bers were about the same. That’s an aver­age pace of 8:36 min­utes per mile, which is real­ly fast for me. I’m not as proud of the results as that may sound, though, because I real­ly pushed myself hard­er than I should of, and to what end? I had nev­er run a half-marathon before, so it’s not like I was try­ing to beat a pre­vi­ous time. There was no way I was going to place in any­thing (I was bare­ly in the top half, 146 out of 215 run­ners, and num­ber 6 of 8 in my age/gender group). Basi­cal­ly, rather than use the expe­ri­ence to learn how to run this dis­tance, I learned exact­ly how not to. I’m going to have to work on pac­ing myself bet­ter if I have any hope to sur­viv­ing the marathon.

Over­heard while run­ning the race at about mile 5–1/2:

Min­neso­ta Guy: Yeah, the peo­ple who run with those huge fuel belts with like eight or ten bot­tles, or even those big heavy bags, they look like com­pete geeks. It’s like they’re run­ning with a full water stop for the whole race.

J.R. (Girl From Train­ing Team): Yeah.

Yes, Min­neso­ta Guy (who sounds just like Gar­rick Van Buren), I am a geek. I run with a Camel­bak with the exact amount of flu­ids I’ll need to fin­ish the race. I’m also right behind you. I may not be that fast, but I also know that it is not the 2lb pack I’m car­ry­ing that is slow­ing me down. Espe­cial­ly since I’m sweat­ing enough to loose about that much dur­ing the course of the race anyway.

Suc­cess! We both ran 13.1 miles today in the First Annu­al Angela Dyer Birth­day Half-Marathon. It was great day to be out run­ning, although since we got a late start, we did­n’t fin­ish until 1:00pm, when it was about 85°. I’m real­ly proud of Angela, though, because she stuck it out and ran the entire time.

Published
Categorized as Running

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. Hey J & Angela…

    Great job… I’m so proud of you guys… That’s so great that you guys are rock­ing along w/ the run­ning. You’re inspir­ing me to get back out & run as much as I can… I’ve been all over the map in my per­son­al & pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits & have not put much time into run­ning like I have in the past… I’m going to do my best to get out & there & run as much as I can… and run smart… Thanks for the inspiration.…

    -dc

  2. Dave, I read a nice lit­tle arti­cle the oth­er day in Men’s Health about the many ben­e­fits of run­ning & car­dio. The point was to pri­or­i­tize your life. The quote was that 30 min­utes of run­ning trumps a sit­com. I know that you don’t watch TV, but that’s the idea.

    We’re both strug­gling with it, too. Sleep­ing in is so much nicer than run­ning at 6:00 am, but we still try. I’ve real­ly been try­ing to find new streets to run on as well.

    Any­way, I’m real­ly glad to hear that you’re back into it. You’re always wel­come to come run up here, espe­cial­ly if you feel like doing 26.2 miles come mid-November.

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