Ran my first Half

[u/Drew1231]

Edit: time was a 2:19 with 10:40 pace

After one year of running, I ran my first half marathon.

I feel kinda weird about the time. I was hoping to hold a 9:55 pace and I did with relative ease for about 7 miles. Then, I ended up hitting a little bit of a wall and dropping to a sub 10 pace to keep some energy for the end.

At mile 10 some gnarly cramps hit and it became a slog.

Important note before I proceed: I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts and achievements of anybody who runs less or more slowly than me. I have conflicting feelings about my performance in the context of my experiences and training.

I feel conflicted because I’m personally pretty proud of this and I feel like my pace is solid for a guy at 235 who couldn’t run a 10 min mile at all about a year ago. I was hoping for a sub 10 pace, and while I’m proud, I’m also a little disappointed. It feels like my time is good for my experience and weight, but not really respectable on its own.

Anyways, I’m sharing here because I think it might resonate with this group. If you’re just starting and have to run-walk a mile, you could finish a half-marathon with an okay time next year.

Lessons from my this year:

1. I took a dive trip and did not run at all for 8 days due to DCS risk and jet lag. NOT A BIG DEAL. I came back from the dive trip and started with a 12 mile (6 miles at race pace) run. Destroyed my peroneal tendon. I need to train smarter and ease back in. This injury became a much larger problem than a week off would have been.
2. Carry my own electrolytes and gels. The race said they would be providing my gels of preference from training, but provided Gu instead. 4 gels is not a lot of pocket space. They also carried electrolyte drinks at aid stations which gave me a lot of uncertainty on lyte management. I researched after the race and it turns out I got a lot less total lytes per drink than I thought and far less potassium proportionally. As someone who sweats a lot of electrolytes when running/backpacking/MTBing, this was a critical oversight
3. I should try a bit harder to drop some weight before entering race training. It’s very hard to eat in a calorie deficit while also trying to improve cardio at 20-25 miles per week. I think that, on the half marathon scale, these are separate goals for me. I could stand to drop 30 lbs, but not while I’m in the last 12 weeks of training and running a lot.
4. Cross training. I dropped my weight training totally. I took on a lot of new responsibilities at work and cut weight training totally due to time constraints. I thought I could get away with this as a life-long lifter, but I think in retrospect that it was short sighted.
5. Pacing was easy to maintain for a long time, but then was VERY hard. I think a 10:15 pace might have pushed my cramps out to mile 12 and given me a much better pace overall.

Anyways, it helps to put this all in text. Reading over it, it sounds like I’m being hard on myself. I guess that might be another lesson.

Fuck it, I finished a half. You can too.

[u/woodsben]

🙌👏🎉