To hit a goal, sometimes you just have to try again. Trying it together with friends also helps.

October

Back in October, Nark Running & Strength put on a low-key (aka. very small and limited), but professionally timed, race called the Run 4 the River Half. The particular course that we ran followed the Mohawk Hudson Half-Marathon course, which had been cancelled this year and became yet one more pandemic race casualty. My original target pace for the R4R Half was to be 7’12” mile, but keep in mind, my previous and only half-marathon time was 8’05” mile.

When it came time for race day, I could tell that my body was off. I don’t know if I hadn’t rested enough, or if I was just experiencing the inconsistencies of my 41 year old body, but either way, I didn’t feel 100%. Even though I wasn’t feeling great, my watch kept telling me that I was hitting my paces perfectly. It looked like despite my bodily setbacks, I’d be hitting my target. Around 8 miles I hit the flat part of the course and things started to fall apart. I began feeling the strain on my body and I could tell I was slowing down. My paces were dropping, my legs started to rebel, I could feel myself falling behind, but my watch kept telling me that even though I was slowing down I was still doing relatively well.

Despite my watch telling me otherwise, the truth started sinking in when other runners started passing me, runners who were supposed to be completing the course at the same time or slower than myself. Eventually, I made it over the finish line and looked at my watch, I then looked at the actual timing results, my time was waaaaaay slower than what my watch said. It started to dawn on me, that my watch had screwed up, and I had been running the wrong paces the whole time. While I didn’t even come close to my target pace, I did run a 7’30” mile pace, which was a significant improvement and PR from previous time.

November

Fast forward to November, one of my other teammates, Michelle, wanted to redo her R4R Half race and my coach asked me to run with her, and see if I could get a better time as well. In addition to having someone to run with, my coach pulled in two pacers to help pace us while he road his bike along side us. Unlike the first race, I knew immediately in my warmup that I was feeling amazing, my body felt ready with no weird aches and pains. I was also excited knowing that this would be a group effort and we’d all be in it together. Our main goal was to get under 7’30” mile pace and hopefully exceed this pace.

Right from the start we were all hitting pace perfectly. Everyone’s watch (including mine because I broke down and bought a Garmin 🤪) were all in sync. Each mile we hit our paces perfectly. I was feeling amazing and more and more confident about pulling off a great time. Around the 8 mile mark we hit the flats and instead of burning out or slowing down, we started picking up the pace. Mid 7s mile pacing started dropping to low 7s and we kept pushing forward. Around 9 or 10 miles I started pulling away from my teammate and thought I might drop her. My coach had stayed with me and the other two pacers stayed with my friend. At mile 11, my coach looked back and surprised me by saying she was maybe 30 seconds behind, I had thought I had pulled ahead further than that. Around mile 12, he said she had caught up a bit and was maybe 10-15 seconds behind. I was close to my max and was starting to be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to hold my position for the final mile.

Despite being at max capacity I was able to hold my position for the final mile of the race. Michelle came in ~10 seconds behind and we both dropped our overall average by 11 seconds per mile! I was super pleased with the execution of this race. We hit our pacing perfectly, we pushed it to the max at the end, we dropped our time significantly and we did it together as a team. To hit a goal, sometimes you just have to try again. Trying it together with friends also help.

Total Time: 1:36:07
Pace: 7’19”
Place: NA
Division Place: NA
Bib #: NA