Carlsbad Half

Christine and I did the Carlsbad 1/2-marathon today. It was brutally cold in the morning so I was glad to have my long sleeve shirts and Ireland-found gloves to walk in. There was incredible traffic and we showed up at the start line just as the race gun went off. No time to stretch. Not good. We had both set a goal to try and complete the race at 3hrs flat. This is my second 1/2-marathon. My time for the Rose Bowl one in December was 3hrs 8mins. I didn't push too hard on that one so I was confident I could improve my time, although 3 hours was pretty ambitious. To hit that mark, I needed to average a 13.43 min/mile. I can regularly cruise at 13.30 so I thought it was possible.

No stretching means that we started out more slowly than I would have liked in order to loosen up. I had also left my GPS watch on "bike" mode so I had to struggle with changing the setting while on the move. We warmed up after a mile or so and then tried to pick up the pace. We tried to make up time and were going at around a 13:20 min/mile pace for a large portion of the race. Around mile 9 or so, I started to run out of steam and my speed really started to slow down. I think pushing too hard early one really just wore me out for the last few miles. The last mile was an incredible slow 16:50ish min/mile!

Final time was 3hrs 6mins. It is still a respectable time for a walker but there is definitely room to improve. A couple of things that I will change for the next race:

1) More sleep! 5 hours of sleep before a race is not enough
2) Eat more on the course. I was lazy with my gels and lost energy on the way
3) Remember to eat salt on the course. I was trained better than this
4) No biking the day before. It was only 10-miles but my legs were tired out. I tend to put a lot of miles on them.

Next race is probably San Dieguito on February 10.