Pittsburgh (Half) Marathon Weekend Recap

Well, that was surprising. Let's start with the 5K.

5K

I... did not do well in the 5K. Or at least I didn't quite get the time I expected. Which, granted, might have been a bit ambitious. But I'd been feeling pretty good and felt like I should be able to do three 8 minute miles in a row. I was wrong. My splits were more like:

Mile 1: 7:57
Mile 2: 8:23
Mile 3: 8:54

Totally the opposite of negative splits. Luckily for me, no one else was trying on the 5K, so I actually did pretty well comparatively!

Overall: 443/3789 (top 12%)
Women: 122/2219 (top 5%)
Division: 19/347 (top 5%)

Beggars can't be choosers, so I'll take it.

Half Marathon

I did not think I would do well in the half. My training has been mediocre ever since I switched from the full to the half. I haven't done well in recent, shorter races (looking at you Pirates 10K and the 5K I did the day before!). So I lined up a little bit closer to the back, put some music on, and just did my best. And about midway through, I realized that my best this race might actually be my best ever. The one thing about Pittsburgh is that it has SO MANY HILLS. Every time I crested a hill, I thought "surely that will be the worst one". And yet, every time, I was wrong. According to my Garmin, the worst hill was actually at mile 12, which is also where I had the slowest pace. I still had energy, but my quads were feeling dead from hills. I've got a table of my pace/mile, but I also included what Strava calls "Grade-Adjusted Pace", which I think just exists to make me feel better about myself? Ok, maybe it actually helps determine if I put in even effort over even pace. Which, I think I did? According to the GAP, my pace only varied by a minute over the whole 13.1 miles.

Mile	Pace	GAP	HR
1	9:20 /mi	9:18 /mi	146 bpm
2	9:04 /mi	9:04 /mi	147 bpm
3	8:54 /mi	8:53 /mi	158 bpm
4	9:07 /mi	8:59 /mi	167 bpm
5	8:57 /mi	8:56 /mi	173 bpm
6	8:41 /mi	8:39 /mi	172 bpm
7	9:34 /mi	9:20 /mi	173 bpm
8	9:05 /mi	8:57 /mi	169 bpm
9	9:17 /mi	9:13 /mi	168 bpm
10	9:30 /mi	9:24 /mi	173 bpm
11	9:18 /mi	9:16 /mi	173 bpm
12	9:55 /mi	9:14 /mi	172 bpm
13	8:16 /mi	8:30 /mi	174 bpm
14	7:13 /mi	7:31 /mi	176 bpm

I ended up coming in at 2:00:44, which is just SEVEN SECONDS slower than my personal record. Considering my PR was set at Run to Remember which had a total elevation of 138ft (this one was 454ft), I'm counting this as a personal record. I beat my previous time by over four minutes! I think I also did better comparatively than I ever have before in a half:

Overall: 3433/12795 (top 27%)
Women: 1342/7495 (top 18%)
Division: 238/1265 (top 19%)

Apparently I both run AND do double-unders with the same slack jaw and blank stare 😛

Run Around the Square Recap

I did Run Around The Square this past Saturday. It's an annual 5K in Regent Square (my neighborhood). It's pretty brutal and includes a tougher climb than I have ever done in a 5K, with 285 ft of elevation gain. I crushed the first mile and then the second mile started straight uphill and totally crushed me. I was able to really pick up the pace again at mile 2.3. I ended up finishing in 26:27 (8:31I didn't PR in this one, but I'm pretty happy since I only did one minute slower than my PR and that was at only 10 ft of elevation gain. I was 23/104 in my class (30-35 women, top 25%) and I was in the top 33% overall. It definitely really smoked my legs. I did a 17 mile run the day after and I was smoked after 12 miles and had to push through.

BAA Half + Oktoberfest 5k Recaps

I just got this tool and it has made a huge difference in how my feet feel. Because I was feeling slightly better, I was able to argue myself into doing both the Oktoberfest 5K and the BAA Half. I was pretty much always going to do the 5K... it's short and I didn't see any reason to skip it. However, I had convinced myself that I shouldn't do the half. Then I convinced myself that I should a few days before. Why? Because it was the last race in the distance medley and I didn't feel like I should skip it unless I was feeling really shitty (which I wasn't). So here are the race recaps!

Oktoberfest 5K was a solid race. The Cambridge 5K folks always know how to put on a great event. They are never too crowded and always a good time. Since it's Cambridge, the courses are almost always completely flat. While I didn't improve as much as I wanted to, I did decrease my overall time by about 30 seconds and finished in 25:26 (an 8:11 min/mile pace). Near the end I started slowing down, so I made the choice to take some strategic walk breaks. I had been on track to finish my last mile in 9 minutes. By taking the walk breaks and catching my breath, I was able to keep that last mile down to 8:20. Lesson: there is no shame in walking. Granted, half the time I walk during a race, I get some comment like "you got this! almost done!" from some stranger. Not sure about everyone else, but comments like that make me feel like I'm failing by walking... instead of making a strategic decision that will allow me to get a better time than I would if I had kept running.

The BAA Half was not what I expected. Mostly my own fault because I didn't bother to look at the course map ahead of time. It's in Jamaica Plain, so it starts off in the opposite side of the city from me, so it was a bit hard to get to and from there. The course was also quite hilly, which was a surprise since the other BAA races (the 5K and the 10K) were downtown and incredibly flat. It was also incredibly rainy this past Sunday. And cold. Considering 10000 people were registered and only 6200 people finished, I think a significant amount skipped this race. And since the cutoff time was 3 hours, I'd wager a large amount of people didn't finish. I finished in 2:08:52, which was 3640 overall and 416/832 in my division. The extra cool part for me was that I was one of the last people to start (they closed the start 2 minutes after I crossed), so getting to run past at least 3600 people was pretty cool! The course was also really pretty. If it was a nicer day, I probably would've really enjoyed this race (despite the crowd). As it was, I was not too cold while running, but as soon as I stopped, I was freezing. My clothes were soaking wet. I had a jacket that I had kept in my hydration pack that I put on, but it quickly soaked through as well. I had to wait about 20 minutes for an uber, so, by the time I got home, I had been cold and soaking wet for about an hour. My lips were blue and I couldn't stop shaking. But at least I got a medal with three unicorns on it! As for the Distance Medley as a whole, I finished in 3:31:33, 71/196 in my division and 322/932 out of all women. While it does feel like an accomplishment, I probably wouldn't do it again.

Quick rainy selfie right after finishing the race. Not freezing yet!