Another Half-Marathon Disappointment

Well, the St. Michaels Running Festival half-marathon was a serious personal disappointment. I finished in 2:20:15.

It was a beautiful day.  I had no problem with traffic during the 80-mi drive to St. Michaels, and I got there in plenty of time for my bib pick-up and to use the bathroom twice before the race.  I think the race was pretty well organized, except that we didn't start until 7:55 am, 15 minutes after our scheduled start.

The course was reasonably scenic.  It was a bit sunny, although there was a nice breeze.  It was blessedly flat, as advertised.

I felt like I started off pretty well, starting about 5.8 mph and eventually getting up to about 6.1 mph after a few miles.  I did the first half in about 1:07, which wasn't too bad.  I didn't feel great, but I also didn't feel horrible.  But then between miles 7 and 8, I just started to run out of gas.  I wanted to step it up a bit, but ended up doing a lot of walking breaks.  I drank Gatorade at nearly every stop (maybe 10 of them), and I even ate a free Cliff fuel shot thingy (I'm lucky it didn't bother my stomach), but I just couldn't get going any better.  My right calf started to get pretty tight, but fortunately did not get any worse than that.

I'm really very disappointed with how I did in this race.  I had thought that I was feeling pretty energetic and rested, but now I wonder if that was just relative to the complete exhaustion I was under just a few weeks ago.

Maybe it's that, but I think there are a couple other things:

• I bet that I am still anemic.  I'm waiting to hear back from my blood test last week, but I still think this felt too hard, given my training and background.  According to my Basis Peak, the last 2/3 of the race or so I spent with a heart rate at 170 bpm or higher.  This doesn't seem right - I tried to maintain that level for over an hour!  I wonder if this is partly due to my anemia.
• The training plan I used for this race was based on one of Jenny Hatfield's plans for improving speed for the half-marathon.  However, I stretched it over twice as long of a time period.  I think I ended up having too any short runs as a result, and maybe lost some distance endurance.
• Along the same vein, Jenny's plan didn't have the same kind of speed work that seemed to help me for my first half marathon.  My first training plan for my first half-marathon in May 2014 had speed intervals and separate tempo runs; Jenny's plan did not do that.

The thing that really gets me is that at my average pace from my May 2014 half-marathon, I could have run a whole extra mile in the time I ran today!

So, looking forward...I am hoping to find out about my iron levels soon.  Even if they are back to normal, I'm going to try to ask about stamina and cardio ability.  Actually, I may end up discussing this more with my rheumatologist, who I'm seeing next week, since she has time for this, unlike my PCP.  A lot of people would brush it off as "you finished the race" and not see it as such a regression in ability, but I'm hoping she will understand.

I think that for the summer, I am going to focus on trying to increase my speed and not worry as much about the distance.  Instead of doing a half-marathon in September, I think I will do a 10K with a goal time of 55:00; I would also like to do the Marine Corps Marathon 10K again in October.  I am going to use a training plan from Runner's World last month, again, extended over twice as long so that I have 2 runs per week instead of 3 - 4.  I'm going to try not to have too many easy runs less than 40 min.

After the 10Ks in the fall, if my speed does seem to have increased, I'll move back to a half-marathon goal for next May.  Hopefully changing the emphasis of the training will help me out.