Yesterday Nelso and I ran the Capital City River Run Half Marathon. It was the first time running a race of that distance for both of us. We did run the Fifth Third River bank 25k earlier this year, but both had terrible experiences due to going out too fast (recap). I crashed at Nelso's place the night before and had a good time playing some old old school super nintendo games. We agreed to go out very slow in the morning because both of us had injuries. He had a bum knee and I have a bum heel.
The morning of the race came, and we made it there with plenty of time to spare, after a very good parking job. After Nelso signed up and I picked up my packet we ditched our warmups at the truck and headed to the start line. By the way, the shirt that we got rocked. Normally you get a really cheap plain t-shirt with hideous colors that doesnt really fit that well. CCRR did it right though, a cool blue wik-away long sleeve t that actually had a pretty cool design on it. Anyways, after the singing of the national anthem the gun went off and we were on our way.
The first 3 miles was pretty much a long boring straightaway down Michigan ave. There was a DJ at the end of the road that just happened to be playing The Eye of the Tiger as we went by so that was pretty cool. After that the course turned towards the MSU campus. We ran right by the football stadium and the statue of sparty. The crowd was pretty large at this point and the noise level reflected it.
We definitely went out slow though. I’m not sure that we broke 30 mins for the first 3.5 miles or so. But that was the plan and we stuck to it.
About mile 4 my heel started acting up. The drugs I took in the morning started to wear off I think. It wasn’t serious pain but more of a nagging pain. But at that point we were on the river trail which took my mind of off it. The trail was very nice to run on. It went over the river a couple times with some wood foot bridges and then crisscrossed it’s way through the woods. And actually we were on the trail all the way up until about mile 10 or so.
Nelso and I were still together at that time and were in good spirits. Our goal was to make it without walking and after running 10 slowly we knew we would be fine. I started to pick up the pace a little because I was actually feeling so good.
And with about a mile left I kind of took off and finished the last part of the race at a pretty good pace. I think my time was about 1:48:40 because when I crossed the finish line I saw the clock at 1:49:20 something, and we had started way in the back of the pack. Nelso was only about 20 seconds behind me.
It was a great run. I had no Nike plus or iPod issues. Even though it was way off in distance, it said we ran 13.8 miles. The finish line had some good food too. Even though pizza was the main food, which is something you should never eat after a long run, just ask Nelso who almost gagged from it.
Maybe just maybe I’m closer to running that full marathon than I thought.