Seattle Half Marathon - Good Day

Today was a long hard training run at the Seattle Half Marathon. It ended up being a good day.

This race is notorious for it's bad weather but today was clear, windless and cold which was a blessing. The plan with my coach was to focus today on effort and running negative splits.

I got to the race 40 minutes before the start and got stretched and headed out for a little 20 minute warm up run. I ran into a guy I used to run with in high school during my warm up which was fun he was hoping to run low 1:20's so that would be the last I'd see of him for the day as he would be ahead of me all day. I got to the start about 5 minutes before the gun and worked my way towards the front.

I got started out at a pace which felt very comfortable but I knew it would be a little faster than I'd like as it always is. I hit the first mile in 6:25 and backed off to the mid 6:40's. I focused on really holding back a bit through the next couple of miles and continued to roll along with mile splits in the 6:40's.

At mile 7 I started to increase the effort level a bit and started moving up on some of the other runners just ahead of me. This is also where we hit the tough hills on the course. After a 7:10 mile in mile 8 which included a steep long hill, I got into a pace pushing sub 6:40's which included a 6:27 in mile 12. I finished strong with a good sprint in the final 300 meters to finish in 1:28:00.

I was happy with the performance as I ran negative splits as planned which is tough on this course with some serious hills in the second half of the race. First half split was 44:09 and the second half split was 43:50 with an average of 6:43 per mile. Best of all my tendinitis didn't bother me too much and I felt like I could have kept going at this pace. All in all a good day.

Overall things are progressing nicely with training. It looks like I'll be headed to Tucson in March for a 5 day training camp with Peter Reid and Peter Cross. This will be a bike focused camp so I'm expecting some serious ride mileage over those couple of days and a planned long ride weekend in April in Coeur d'Alene.

November Update

It's been a busy month and a half since beginning to work with Shawn Skene. The focus has been on swimming and running. My running is going pretty well and I'm feeling good while running despite a little resurgence in my hip and back pain which I'm managing day to day. We'll get a test of where I really am this next weekend as I'm planning on running in the Seattle 1/2 Marathon next Sunday. The more troublesome thing lately is tendonitis in my hamstring tendon. I've got the go ahead to train through it from my PT but it's still painful particularly when I swim.

My swim is really improving with the drills and workouts that Shawn has me doing. I feel much more comfortable in the pool water and I might just turn that swim leg from a "lets just get through this" to "let's set the tone for the rest of this race". A few weeks ago I would have been ecstatic with doing 100 yard intervals comfortably in around 1:40. This week I was comfortably completing my 100 yard intervals in 1:28 - 1:30 which is very encouraging given that we still have 7 1/2 months until Coeur d'Alene.

Looking at heading south this spring for a camp with Peter Reid in Tuscon which will kick off the serious bike training. More to come....