The Parks Half Marathon 2008

Montgomery County Road Runner’s Club website : http://www.mcrrc.org
Join the club and enroll in their First Time Marathon program, you’ll be amaze by the results 🙂

2008 Results http://www.mcrrc.org/racing/2008/20080914ParksHalfMarathon.htm

Coverage of the race by RunWashington.com http://www.runwashington.com/news/sep08parkshmrpt.html

Pictures of almost all runners are available at Edward Johnson’s site http://edwardjohnson.com/running/parks/index.html

Runners traversing the narrow path through the Parks

Starting mile, Veirs Mill Road

The Parks Half Marathon (http://www.parkshalfmarathon.com), a premier race held by Montgomery County Road Runners Club to showcase the county’s parks system had its 3rd debut today at 7:00AM. I’ve been looking forward to September 14 for a while now. Ever since the Annapolis 10 miler I’ve been training diligently to find a comfortable pace to run the Marines Corps Marathon this coming October 26. I am starting to take training a bit more seriously now, I want to know what my best is. On Saturday, I  did everything I was suppose to to get ready for the race, I loaded up on carbs, minimized my walking distances and slept at 10PM so I can get at 5:30AM to get ready. I even bought Frank Shorter’s running gears shorts and tank top to see if it make a difference 🙂

The shorts were well, really short. My pasty white quads were publicly exhibited to about 2000+ runners this morning. There might have been a wardrobe malfunction incident, I knew something was wrong when a girl, running beside me was giggling. Her giggling suddenly made me self conscious so I looked down to see if any body parts was making any unplanned appearances. NOPE, everything was where it should be, but just to play it safe I sped up passed her to avoid any awkward conversations. We would argue about exactly what she saw and made her giggle, I would then make awkward jokes telling her that it get even smaller in water. She would laugh but deep down I’d know she’s not laughing with me but rather at me. Its best just to avoid the drama and heartache.

Just last Sunday I ran on the very same course as part of a training run with the FTMers (First Time Marathoners) For once I know what the course would be like before the actual run. This turn out to be more of a nuisance then a blessing. Confident that I know the course I took off blazing through it. Around mile marker 4 I knew I started out way too fast and needed to slow it down. I sweat profusely and by mile 5 I was completely drenched. I made casual remarks to other runners that the shower was nice and they should try it also. I get the occasional laugh but I know they’re thinking to themselves “man this dude sweat A LOT”. I decided to take it easy from mile 4-7 so I would have some reserve for the negative split. I felt uneasy as people were passing me but I stuck to the plan and ran a slower pace until mile 7. I was pumped when I saw the mile 8 marker. I had plenty of reserve left so I decided to go a bit faster. I caught up with the 9:00 minute pacer and stayed with her until mile 12. I am not sure what her name was but she did a great job pacing us, if it weren’t for her friend egging me on to keep going after the last water stop I would’ve slowed down tremendously. At mile marker 12 I decided to sprint like a bat out of hell. My goal for this race is 2 hours, my watch showed 1:55 with 3/4 mile to go, I hauled ass and managed to pass the finish line with a gun time of 2:00:05

I MADE IT. 2 hours, I started in the 3rd wave so I was about 3 minutes behind the gun time. I realized that I had ran a sub 2 hours half marathon. I discretely pumped my fist in celebration of a race well ran. The official result showed that I ranked 769/2037. Not too shabby 🙂 My next races are a 5k and another half marathon. I hope to get a PR for each event.

Course Map

Course Map - Satellite View

Street View

Street View

Me almost at the finish line.

Almost there

FINISH!!!

 I smell foooood, so I sprinted like a fat kid on a cake run.