This Sunday, March 20, I raced in the Atlanta Publix Half Marathon. The course takes runners through many parts of the wonderful city of Atlanta - starting at Centennial Olympic Park, we run through Georgia State University Campus (where I am currently a PhD student), The Martin Luther King National Historical Site, Inman Park, Little Five Points, the Carter Center, the Virginia Highlands, Piedmont Park, Georgia Tech Campus (my Masters degree alma mater), and back to downtown and the Olympic Park.
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| View on the course around Mile 2.5 |
The long and short of this race: I ran a Personal Best by over 10 minutes, crossing the finish line in 1:34:50, which is about 7:15 pace per mile. I placed 12th in my age group of 1107, and 42 overall out of 6163 women. This sounds pretty good but was over 5 minutes slower than my goal time for the day. Based on previous races and my training, I should have gone under 1:30 easily. Unfortunately I just ran out of gas after the first 9 miles and just SURVIVED the last 4!! My legs were like rocks!! It didn't help that at mile 9 we began a mile and half climb (see race profile below). Maybe I went out too fast, maybe I should have eaten more or drank more Gatorade on the course, I'm not sure - but it was a learning experience and I'll do better next time!
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Race Profile
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I was lucky enough to share this experience with a bunch of my friends here in Atlanta who all did great!!!
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| All the fine finishers and support crew! (Annie, Jeff, Alex, Jill, Robin, Ruth, Mike, Laura (me), Virginia, Ivana, Shaan -"Shaannie", Shannon, Amelia, Konrad) There were many Personal Records among this crowd! Congrats to everyone!! |
That's a good looking crew! Congrats to you all.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on a great (tough!!) race and a new PR. A 10-minute PR is BIG time. Love the picture of ya'll
ReplyDeleteRunning Meme, Excellent article. Very interesting to read. I really love to read such a nice article. Thanks! keep rocking.
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