Happy Girl - PDR LBRR

Based on the title of this blog, you may have surmised, oh savvy reader, that I am pleased with how PDR went today. As I've mentioned in another post, the PDR half marathon has never been a good race for me - not sure why. I badly wanted to do well today - at least break two hours, which I've never done at this race (but have in the two other half marathons I've done).

The weather is always a gamble this time of year, but today was perfect - low 50s at the start, sunny, no real wind to speak of. I had foolishly taken a culinary gamble last night - eating beef, which my body has not really 'done' in more than 15 years.... but friends had made a delicious Greek dish called Moussaka, which is made with ground beef. I did not eat a lot of it, but spent the rest of the evening and part of the night feeling like I had done something very unwise as my stomach was in full protest. I was wondering if I'd have to title today's blog Mous-sucka. Thankfully, by morning, I was feeling back to normal.

I picked up Seebo and headed over to the race. We met up with Amy and tried to stay warm before the race began. As Amy and I headed towards our corral, I found my Dad waiting by corral #7 where I said I'd be. I had called him earlier to ask if he could bring with him a sports watch, if he had one, so that I could keep track of my time and splits during the race. (Like a knucklehead, I had forgotten mine.) He kindly brought what he had, but I opted to go without since it was one of those stretchy-metal-band watches and I worried that it would be too uncomfortable during the race.

Amy and I tried to pack ourselves into the starting lineup, but there really was no room. The first two miles were largely spent doing the ole bob and weave around the throngs of people. I missed the initial mile mark completely, but Amy heard someone say something about being at an 8:40 pace, so that seemed like a good start to me. Not too fast, not too slow. The first few miles went by quickly. Amy estimated that we were about two minutes behind the race clock (meaning we didn't actually cross the 'start' line until 2 minutes after the gun went off).

By mile four, I was still feeling pretty good. I felt like those first four miles were pretty quick, so I figured that I would try to reign it in for at least the next four miles so as to not tire myself out. Without a watch, it was difficult to know how I was doing in terms of mile splits. This was further complicated by the fact that three (or four) mile markers were sans functioning timers, so, really, I had no idea how fast I was going. I actually think this helped me because I was (naturally) worried that I was going too slow. Ideally, I wanted to try to maintain around an 8:45 pace - which would give me about a 1:55 finish time. Like I said, I was just hoping for under 2 hours... 1:55 was, in my mind, a best case scenario.

Of course Amy and I were looking ever so cute in our skorts.. trouble with that was that I did not have any pockets for my Gu. I thought about going without since I don't use Gu during my training runs, but at the last moment decided I would stow it in my cleavage...hey, why not, right? Wasn't sure how that would work out, but it worked perfectly.. that is until it was time to retrieve said Gu somewhere just after mile eight. Guess I'm not the smooth character I sometimes like to think I am because I dropped it in the midst of a water stop. Water stops are mass hysteria anyway with people travelling at all different speeds, some carrying water or sticky, nasty Accelerade. I had to make the split second decision whether I should stop and go back for it or just keep going. I decided to go get it - hoping no one had trampled and popped it. I found it intact and managed to squeeze most of it down with some water. In general, I find gels to be pretty nasty, but the Vanilla Gu one is at least somewhat palatable. It kind of tastes like vanilla pudding.

The last five miles went pretty well. Knowing my typical habit of hitting the wall around mile 11, I tried to make sure that I held back a little bit before getting to those two final miles. Even without the watch, I knew I was having a very good race and the last thing I wanted was to fall apart in the last two miles. When mile marker 12 came into view, I felt very relieved because I still felt like I had something left in the tank and I knew I could hold on for that last 1.1 miles. One of the cruelties (I think) of the PDR is that the last mile is a bit uphill and in full blast sun. There is no shade. No where to hide. I remember this doing me in during the two prior years when I ran this dang thing. Thankfully, the weather was cool enough this year whereas this was much less of a factor for me.

They moved the finish line this year.... for reasons (so I heard) related to photo-ops. Looking at the finish of the course on the map, it looked dumb to me... a hairpin turn merely a few hundred yards before the finish line. But when I rounded that final corner, I liked that the finish line was right there - close enough to reel it in with a good kick and far enough away that I felt like I could get a good kick in.... don't know if that makes sense... but anyway, I liked it. Rounding that bend, I could see that I'd finish under 1:53, clock time, and that made me very, very happy. Checking the results page after the race, looks like Amy and I were more like three minutes behind the clock time, which put my finish time at under 1:50 - much to my surprise and making me one happy girl.

So all in all, a great race day. Seebo had a good day as well and so we'll celebrate tonight with a nice dinner at Amada. Wasn't in the cards for Amy today, but I know she'll kick butt next year and in the rest of the races this fall. And she looked F-I-N-E in her skort... and, really, isn't that the most important part?

Chip time 1:49:38.... a PR for me by over 6 minutes!... and a PR for me for this race by over 10 minutes.

As happy as I am with this... almost immediately I started thinking, "Oh crap... now I'm going to have to try to beat that next year?"

Running the Numbers
Anyone can tell you what place they came in overall (3,386th out of 11,629) or for their gender (857th woman out of 5,651).... but it takes a special kind of procrastination from doing other work to figger out that I was the 8th fastest Rebecca (out of 37)... and that of the eight people from Prospect Park that ran the race... I beat five of them... including the only other woman.