Bill Menees's Blog

The Bad News

The 2009 Country Music Half Marathon officially kicked my butt. I was aiming for a 1:30, and I finished at 1:44. Yuck.

I lost the 1:30 group by mile 5. I fell off PR pace by mile 10. After that I didn’t care about my time, except I felt obligated to finish faster than last year. So in the last 3.1 miles I walked some, drank a cold beer, and lollygagged to the finish line at 1:44 something. It was a disgusting, humiliating race. Every long run all year felt better than this one. I stunk this up royally.

My 5K split was 21:17 (6:51), and my 10K split was 43:48 (7:02). My 10 mile split was 1:14:19 (7:26), and by that point 8 minute miles were the best I could do. My time and pace over the last 3.1 miles (including walking and beer drinking) were 30:27 and 9:47. Sheesh.

The weather was not good for racing, but my day could have been worse. More than 40 runners were taken by ambulance to Metro General hospital, and one runner died of a "sudden cardiac event" after crossing the finish line. A dark day indeed.

The Good News

From this mess I've learned some lessons that should make me a better racer in the future. Probably the most important lesson is that I should only worry about running the best race I can on the current day in the current conditions. I was devistated by mile 10 when I knew I'd missed both my goal and any shot at a PR. But I foolishly threw away the last 3.1 miles and stopped racing.

The point of a race is to finish as fast as you can, and I gave up on that. I've never given up in a race before, not even in my two awful Flying Monkey finishes. At the Flying Monkey Marathons I didn't really expect to do well, so going into them I had a "do the best I can no matter what" mindset. But my hopes were too high for the CM Half given the weather that was dealt to me. Now I see that that was no reason to quit, but I didn't get that on Saturday. I'd much rather be able to look back and say I did my best to run a 1:39 than to have to admit that I gave up and ran a 1:44. I won't make that mistake again.

Another lesson I learned is that if I'm having a truly terrible day because of the weather then probably everyone else is too. Even with my half-hearted finish, I ended up in the top 3.3% overall (760 out of 22749), the top 7% in my age group (98 out of 1398), and the top 7% in my gender (599 out of 8244). Those percentages aren't too bad, but they make me feel like a real loser for giving up and letting dozens (or hundreds?) of people pass me in the final miles while I sipped a beer and jogged.

A final important lesson is that I shouldn't put all my eggs in one basket by having a single goal race. This was the only half marathon on my spring race calendar. I skipped the Frostbite Half in February and the Tom King Half in March, so now I have to wait until this fall to "redeem myself". I'll probably put several halfs on my fall calendar (e.g., Middle Half Oct. 3, Music City Half Oct. 18, Let Freedom Run Nov. 1 (?)).

Yesterday I mailed my entry for next weekend’s Wild Thang 9Mi trail run. I’m getting right back on the wagon or the horse or whatever cliché involves racing and a little bit of drinking. Here's hoping for better weather and faster running!

Labels: Running

# posted by Bill Menees @ 7:54 PM