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 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!
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:
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 😛
