Half Marathon Performances

While I was running this morning here in Vancouver, I reflected back a little bit on my half marathon performance from this past Sunday in Austin. (Steve Bezner reported this afternoon that the folks with 3M announced that the course was a tenth of a mile short in mile 7.) What I was realizing is that I didn't really break new ground with the PR. Here are my top times in the half marathon:

2:12:06.5 - 1/29/06 - 3M Half Marathon, Austin, TX (23rd career)
2:16:38 - 4/30/05 - Drake Relay On-The-ROADS Half Marathon, Des Moines, IA (14th)
2:16:58.2 - 4/3/05 - Big D Texas Half Marathon, Dallas, TX (13th)
2:18:51 - 5/1/05 - Lincoln National Guard Half Marathon, Lincoln, NE (15th)
2:18:53* - 3/5/05 - Baylor Student Foundation Bearathon (12.85 miles = 2:16:14.4), Waco, TX (12th)

2:20:38.24 - 10/15/05 - Huntsville Half Marathon, Huntsville, TX (20th)
2:21:09.1 - 11/20/05 - Motive Bison Stampede, Austin, TX (21st)
2:21:29 - 9/26/04 - Buckeye Half Marathon, Akron, OH (8th)
2:21:41 - 10/2/04 - Texas MedClinic Helotes Half Marathon, Helotes, TX (9th)
2:23:25 - 10/9/04 - Huntsville Half Marathon, Huntsville, TX (1oth)

The course in Iowa, which is really what I consider to be my PR, was flat after about mile 5. So, take away 3-4 minutes and you get a downhill best in the 3M Half Marathon and add 3-4 minutes and you have a best on a hilly course in the Huntsville Half Marathon.

Actually, the bottom five are respectable performances in their own right; however, I can't say that any of the 10 could be considered a "magical run". But they're all special in a sense.

The ones in Iowa and Nebraska I ran on back-to-back days while travelling (flying to Omaha Friday night, driving to Des Moines that evening, running in Iowa on Saturday morning, driving to Lincoln Saturday afternoon, running in Nebraska on Sunday morning and flying back to Houston Sunday afternoon).

The Big-D Texas Half Marathon is one I did at the last minute driving up to Dallas early that Sunday morning. It was a little bit of a challenging course and it get warm towards the end of the run. Had it stayed cool or if I had been a little bit better acclimated to the temperature increase, that might have been the standard.

And the last three on the list -- last fall in '04 --were done on back-to-back-to-back weekends on increasingly difficult courses, but they represented about a 6-minute drop from any previous half marathon that I had done to that point.

I really like the half distance as it is one that I can really run hard the majority of the way and I think it is the distance that I can have the potential to see the most progress in. My goal here is still 2:10:59 and that is what I'm always gunning at.

And on the way there, I want to get to 25 states (whenever) and 41 half marathons before I turn 41. That's 15 more states and 18 more half marathons in just under 2 years.