Another Half Marathon

The legs, especially the quads, are HURTING today! Finished the San Diego "Triple Crown" yesterday - 3 Half Marathons in 2015. First Carlsbad, then La Jolla, and finally, today, AFC (America's Finest City) Half Marathon. It was hot and humid for San Diego and this seems to be typical for this 1/2. It's also a challenging course, starting at the Point Loma lighthouse and descending for a number of miles before flattening out, with a final not-so-fun hill in one of the final miles before leveling of in Balboa Park. It's a beautiful point-to-point race. It was great to see many Team Challenge fellow athletes out there racing!

With the terrain the way it was I decided to ignore my mile pace and run based on feel and heart rate. Which meant I probably ran too hard down the hills and the quads pay for that. As the race progressed and leveled off I slowly increased my effort and allowed my heart rate to slowly rise. It kept hitting 141+ (which is a tick below Zone 4 for this geezer and I didn't know how LONG I could handle Z4). I'd back off slightly but I'd look again and it was up again. In spite of that the occasional mile split I'd see were relatively slow so I continued to try to ignore that, focus on steady effort and good form, and let the finish time be what it would be.

Ran or short-strided most of the final long uphill, passing a good number of people. I had no true sense of what was coming after that hill since I didn't do my due diligence to prepare. From the comments the veterans made to me on Facebook I trusted it would be flat so ran harder that final stretch to the finish. I didn't dig as deep for this as I have other races and I think it's an indication that my focus is elsewhere - Silverman 70.3 and Ironman Arizona. I did cut a lot of training out last week as something of a taper but now it's back to it with 7 weeks to go until Silverman.

Time to do some foam rolling, grinding, and stretching!

Boring details:
2:07:13 (9:36/mi, HR ave 138, HR max 158)
37th of 149 in age group (top 25%)
988th of 2445 males (40%)
1551st of 5021 overall (30.9%)
Splits:
1 Mile - 9:24 ("flat"), HR ave 119
2 - 8:57 (slight uphill +33ft), 133
3 - 8:37 (-76ft), 135
4 - 8:14 (-270), 133
5 - 9:05 ("flat"), 137
6 - 9:41 (flat), 138
7 - 9:47 (flat), 139
8 - 10:12 (flat), 139
9 - 10:22 (flat), 140
10 - 9:49 (flat), 142
11 - 10:25 (flat), 141
12 - 10:56 (+114), 142
13 - 9:52 (+76), 149

#Mission1660 #getsladed