Half-Assed Runner

Welcome to Maple Grove – hope you like hills.

For the third weekend in a row, I laced up my shoes and ran a half marathon.  This week’s event was the Maple Grove Half Marathon.  I had not planned on running this race as it does not offer a medal and if I’m going to pound out 13 miles I want a shiny chunk of medal to signify the event.  A few months ago they announced on Facebook that because it was the fifth annual event, they would be issuing finisher medals.  I was in.

This race had a fairly early start.  It’s not far from where I work, so I made the early morning commute pretty much on auto-pilot and arrived at the Maple Grove High School Stadium at 7:10 so I had 20 minutes to dink around before the start of the race.  Packet pickup was really easy as it was held in the Maple Grove REI store and I was able to shoot up there right after work on Friday and nab my packet.  We were told that the shirts would be issued after the race so the packet was bib, timing chip, and some promotional goodies.  I pinned on my bib and secured my timing chip to my shoe then entered the stadium.

It was a glorious day.  The sky was clear and the temperature was in the low 50’s.  There was a mild wind out of the west and the humidity level was low.  Perfect running weather.  After the freezing rain of the Get In Gear and the tropical humidity of the Lake Minnetonka Half, I was very grateful to the weather gods for the perfect day.

The race starts on the track that circles the football field.  By the time I entered the stadium the national anthem (a guitarist channeling his inner Hendrix) was playing.  I lined up just behind the 2:10 pacer.  I wanted to start this race slowly and then try to break 2:05 by picking up the pace over the last few miles.  I wanted to avoid the lack of energy I had on the last miles of the Lake Minnetonka Half.

As I lined up, I heard someone say my name and saw that the manager of the Running Room store that my marathon training class meets was running this race.  She lined up next to me and we chatted a bit.  She was going to try to run 10 minute miles the entire race.  I ran with her for the first couple of miles then slowly moved up.

We ran a half of a lap around the track then exited the stadium.  I loved this course.  It’s by far my favorite course so far.  The course was a mixture of paved trails and residential streets.  The trails circled lakes and the views were awesome.  There were about five small bridges and even a couple of underpasses and a tunnel.  The course started and finished on the track.  Great course…except for the hills. 

This race is known for being hilly.  I’ve run parts of the lake path before and knew there were a lot of smaller hills with a couple of steep buggers thrown in for good measure.  The path didn’t scare me much as I train on very similar paths.  There were about three major hills on the course, but there were a TON of smaller, shorter hills.  It was a rare stretch of running where you weren’t either climbing or descending a hill.

I had left the 2:10 pacer behind shortly after exiting the stadium.  The pacers were spaced pretty tightly at the start of the race (about 750 runners as opposed to the 2,500 and 9,000 runner fields at the start of my last two half marathons) and once we exited the stadium the pacers increased or decreased their pace to hit their split targets.  Against my better judgement, I did not fall back to match the 2:10 pace.

I caught up the 2:05 pacer around mile 3.  I decided that my strategy would be to stick with this pacer and then close strong to break 2:05.  I stuck with this group for a few miles, but by mile 5 I had pulled ahead.  This was okay as I was feeling good and figured that the pacer would catch up to me at the water stops.

Right around mile 3 there was a guy with a large dog tied to a traffic sign.  My eyes followed the long leash to a really ugly dog who looked to be chewing on some shrubs.  The man said something like “C’mon Jimmy, stop eating and cheer on the runners.”  It was only then that I noticed that the “ugly dog” was actually a large pig.

While not every spectator had a large farm animal in tow, the crowd support was awesome.  There were a lot of residents watching and cheering from their homes and many large groups of cheering spectators at the water stops and all along the route.

I ran without headphones for the first 8 miles of the race.  This is the furthest I’ve ever gone without music.  I was drinking in the day and the event.  I was oblivious to my pace and often forgot exactly how many miles I had already run.

After the water stop around mile 8 I pulled out my ear buds.  They were in a tangled clump, so my walking through the water stop was extended as I unknotted them.  This lead to my slowest mile of the race (10:28 yikes!).  Otherwise all of my splits were pretty close to 9:30, with a 9:13 (2nd mile, I gotta stop running mile 2 that fast), 9:18, and 9:56 as the outliers.  Endomondo was measuring the miles slightly short compared to the miles markers again (not as badly as the Minnetonka Half) so those splits were probably a few seconds shorter than the “official” splits.

The reason I mention the splits was because there was a timing mat and clock at the 10K point.  I crossed the mat with 58 something on the clock.  I figured I could take close to a minute off of that value as it took a little while for me to cross the start line, I was shocked to see myself at under one hour halfway through the race.  This meant I was on course for a sub 2 hour half marathon.  Of course, I was wrong.  While I was not aware of my split times as I had not put in my earbuds yet, this still did not cover up the fact that 10K (6.2 miles) is NOT the halfway mark of a half marathon (13.1 miles).  It’s still .7 miles short, which means adding about 6 – 7 more minutes at my pace.  Oh well, doing math while running is not my forte.

I chugged along from mile 8 – 10.  The hills started to wear on me by mile 11.  I was losing energy once again.  I was fueling with Lifesavers and Gu Chomps (watermelon – pretty good).  I hit all of the water stops (except the last one).  The water stops featured *gasp* full-sized cups of water.  Hydration was never a problem.

I overheard that there was a big hill before the end of the race.  I kept looking for it after mile 9.  Starting around the 10.5 mile mark we kept climbing and climbing slowly, then – as we exited the park trail – we had a hill that rose until we turned right, then rose again.  I made it all the way until the last 20 feet or so, then took my first walk break (other than the unplanned walk to untangle my earbuds).  I looked up and saw the Maple Grove water tower and remembered that the hill was called “Water Tower Hill”.  I walked for about 20 seconds to catch my breath and continued running.  By itself, this wasn’t a killer hill, but coming after a ton of other hills it was a beast.

I knew that I was slipping, but after hitting the next water stop I decided to just suck it up for the last 2 miles.  Nothing hurt, but I was battling tired legs and the desire to walk for the rest of the race.  I skipped the last water stop, but ended up walking briefly about a minute later.  I broke down and walked once more before the end of the race.  I kept the walk breaks to about 10 seconds.  I was getting Goldy’s Run flashback.

Finally I could see the stadium up ahead.  I would have liked to sprint at this point, but I had nothing left.  Still, I was ahead of the 2:05 pacer, so I was guaranteed a PR as long as I didn’t collapse.  There were tons of people cheering on the runners as you entered the stadium.  The soft track felt great on my feet.  I did not want to pass the guy ahead of me but I ended up picking up the pace a bit then sprinting the final 50 feet or so to the finish line.

I was surprised to see 2:06 on the clock.  Accounting for the minute or so before I crossed the starting line, I guess that I barely cracked 2:05.  I was a bit disappointed to see that Endomondo showed 2:06.  It turns out I only took about 30 seconds to cross the starting line.  This still confused me as I was sure that I was never passed by the 2:05 pacer.  Maybe she passed me while I was focusing on my stupid earbuds, but I swear I would have seen her and her sign on the big downhill portion right after that even if she did pass me.  Oh well, it wasn’t a PR, but I’ll take it as this was a pretty tough course.

A volunteer clipped off my timing chip and I collected my medal.  I grabbed some water and wandered around a bit and snapped some pictures.  Coming into the stadium I swear I heard my name announced as the winner of a door prize.  The announcer mentioned to check the door prize list after the race.  I looked all over for that list, but never found it.  I grabbed an orange slice and some Muscle Milk then set off to get my shirt.  The volunteer asked for the bottom part of my bib, but I had torn it off while putting on the bib before the race because I didn’t think it was needed since this was a chip timed event.  No problems, she scribbled an ‘X’ on my bib and I collected my shirt.  The shirt is very nice.  It’s a good-looking Brooks shirt.

I think that this is my favorite half marathon so far.  Even though it was hilly and I was a bit disappointed with my time, the course was beautiful.  The weather was perfect and I had a great time.  I can’t wait until the Fargo Half Marathon next week because that course is supposed to be flat as a pancake.  I’m going to shoot for a 2:03 there.