Hoosier Half Marathon Race Report

Today felt like progress. I anticipated I’d run somewhere between 1:35-1:37 and I ran a 1:36:08. I wanted to run 20 miles for the day for my last long training run for Boston, so we warmed up 3.5, ran the race and cooled down 3.5. Correct, this is a much more fun way to get in 20 miles. Makes the 20 more interesting and fun.

The Hoosier Half Marathon is a very hilly course. Elevation for this race was 760 feet…. now that Glenn is all fancy with the Garmin he bought from Marathon Dan, we know these kinds of things from the watch. Hilly course or not, I’m in no shape to try to PR and today my intentions were to run strong, run smart and have a good time working hard. I can honestly say, GOALS accomplished. I was working, no doubt, but I was smiling through most of the race. There was no moment in this race where I felt defeated. Even though my time was much slower, I felt a lot stronger than I did at Indy Women’s Half…. and happier for that matter. (I always underestimate the heat we had that day, not to mention, I was just off) I went into this race with only two very short tempo runs since January (one in February, when I promptly aggravated my hamstring and then one this week) and absolutely no speed work other than that. Just very easy miles (mostly around 8-8:30pace) and a decent amount of time biking compared to my norm.

My mile splits are below- they are kind of weird, since the course is so hilly. Mile 9 for instance, is up Winslow hill, it’s a short hill compared to the the Jordan extension on Mile 4, but it’s steep and I was moving slow. It’s easy to get discouraged on the big hills, because you’re huffin’ and puffin’ and feel like your crawling, but I kept telling myself to “just do me” and not worry about who was passing or anything at all, just get to the top and roll. I would usually be passed by a couple of guys up the hill and then I’d roll past them on the downhill. I’m a good downhill runner?  I would literally smile at the top of every hill and even as I was climbing them I was smiling. There weren’t a ton of spectators on the course, but they were probably wondering why I was so happy to be struggling up a hill.

My Splits:

Mile 1- 7:07

Mile 2- 7:05

Mile 3- 7:23

Mile 4- 7:30 – Long uphill

Mile 5- 6:50 – Long downhill

Mile 6- 7:18

Mile 7- 7:05

Mile 8- 6:55 – downhill

Mile 9- 7:42 – Steep uphill

Mile 10- 7:29

Mile 11- 7:26

Mile 12- 7:28

Mile 13- 7:25

Glenn finished way ahead of me and took a couple of pictures. I love the one below because it is truly a picture of how I felt the whole race. I seriously felt like I was smiling the whole time. There was no pressure here, just wanted to work. I looked at my watch only one time during the whole race and that was at mile 1. I kept it under my arm warmers from then on and never checked back. I had a pretty good feeling what I was running though and since time didn’t matter, I decided there was no need to look.

Glenn had a great race. He is also coming off a bit of a baby injury (had some achilles stuff going on) and took some time off but has been slowly adding in some speed work and building miles. He didn’t decide if he was going to run hard until about a quarter mile into the race.  We started together and he slowly just drifted away from me after about 2 minutes, I just said “well, see ya!.” Going into the race, he was thinking of just running with me, we also contemplated just running the pace he’s pacing for the Carmel Marathon next weekend (around 7:25 pace, which was pretty close to what I actually ran) BUT, when we registered the night before the race and it was $70 an entry, I told him he should just race so we could get our money worth. He ended up running 1:22:30, which is 4 minutes off his PR, but a PR he ran in better shape, on a very flat course. He was very happy with the time & effort (his splits are amazing) and it gave him a good idea of where he really is. Yay! (I’ll make him write a race report soon…)

We could both definitely tell we’ve been doing some runs in Bloomington, while I wasn’t super speedy up the hills, I felt ok, whereas normally I would have been dying up the hills. Glenn dominated them. He has always been pretty strong on hills. I think it has a lot to do with being willing to hurt more than most people. We’ve both decided that we like a hilly course. Breaks it up and in my head the miles go by faster because of all the change. The miles in this race ticked up so quick. They might slow your time down sometimes, but it’s really fun to run down them. 🙂

After I saw Glenn with about a half mile to go, I realized there was a girl pretty close in front of me and immediately thought, wait Lindsey what are you doing, there’s no reason to not go pass that chick. So I passed her and with that last 200 meters running pretty hard, with that last 100 being up a gross hill. I guess it put me over the edge because I immediately threw up when I crossed the finish line. I don’t think that would have happened if I wasn’t pushing that last bit in. P

I placed 19/493 for women and 3/121 in my age group. It was a good day. Hopefully Glenn will write up his race report soon. 🙂

Do you ever feel like your victory races aren’t neccesarily on PR days? 

How do you do on hills? Love them, hate them? Love to hate them?