First Half Marathon

Miles: 13.1
Time: 2:28:45
Average speed per mile: 00:11:22
Temp: -5
Windchill: -20

Late Friday evening I found out the frozen half was cut in half. One of my conditions was if they lowered the mileage I was not going to do it. To be on the start line in St. Paul at 9AM for 6.55 miles was not worth my time. Thankfully I didn’t pre-register. Although, I was still determined to run the distance on January 24th. Why not wait until warmer weather you ask—good question…I just wanted to get it done. So, I called my friend Dan—who is a runner and per my peer pressure was going to do the frozen half also—to go out and run the full distance anyways on our own course. He said ok.

We met at 11am—it was a whole 5 degrees warmer (like you can really tell)—and drove down to Lake Calhoun for our 13.1 mile run. Using his nifty GPS watch he kept track of the distance, avg speed, and time. I just following his footsteps while watching my heart rate creep into zones I hoped it wouldn’t hit until later in the run.

First stop (or should I say walk—no stopping on this run) was around mile 5.5—ugh things were not clicking. I wasn’t getting into the groove. I blame the weather, running with someone—I always run alone, and going out of the gate too fast. First mile was nine and a half minutes—this was too fast. I couldn’t keep that for 12 more miles.

We went past Paul’s school (also known as the DBR King)—the place I took my swimming lessons, over the Mississippi on Lake Street, down Riverside road. Oh how I wished I had my bike then…running at a snail’s pace is not the same when we tend to fly down that road on our Stone Arch rides in the summer. We went past the Ford plant—didn’t realize that was there—and then figured we better backtrack a bit to the bridge we past (we thought there was another birdge up ahead). Heading back to Lake Calhoun into the wind—will stick with me for a long time. The wind was so harsh and the bridge was icy. I had my balaclava pulled up as high as I could, closed my eyes just enough to see my footing, and just tried to get over the bridge as fast as I could without falling.

2.6 miles left—another walk was needed. This was the point Dan reminded me that this run was a payback for a 30 mile bike ride I took him on this summer on the MT bikes (he’s never done more then 15 miles). We were on the home stretch—sort-of. We had about 1.6 miles to the car so we had to make up that extra 1 mile. We heading down this path next to one of the lakes—I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea since we both said that we would stay clear of any open areas (i.e. a lake) but I was feeling good and the wind wasn’t so bad. UNTIL, we turned around and had to run back into headwind. OH CRAP—that was by far the coldest wind we experienced. My balaclava was pulled down to my chin—little did I know that I wouldn’t be able to use it any more—the thing froze solid from the wind.

Once we were out of the wind I noticed we were close to my real goal of 2 ½ hours. I asked Dan how much further did we have to go—.5 miles!! I asked him if we could do it in 8 minutes—his response was “only if we hull ass now.” I don’t feel like I hulled ass—but I picked it up and came in 1 minute 15 seconds before my goal. I wanted to dance for joy that I did it and that it was over—but I was so cold and I just wanted to get warm and dry as soon as I could. Thankfully Dan started his car on that last half mile so it was nice and warm when we jumped in.