This was an unusual race for me for a couple of reasons, not only was it in Miami, clearly still my 2nd home after all these years, but I knew I would be writing about it to give people a chance to learn about 13.1 who are of course putting on a half marathon in Queens next month.This entry though is more about my own experience, though I will have a more complete review of the race in a few days.
The one thing I will say now is that 13.1 offered one of the best post-races I've ever been a part of. Not only was it a fun party but it truly took advantage of everything Miami. In addition to the Sam Adams (Yes!), there was paella, pan, Cuban coffee, a copious spread of fruits and breads and this was complimented by Latin music and dancing (more for the 5Kers I imagine) at 10th and Ocean in the heart of South Beach. If they do half this good in Queens, we're gonna have a lot of happy people post-race. I'm truly impressed.
Myself, I went into this race with mixed expectations. I actually start almost all races in a somewhat dichotic state of mind. Half of me thinks it's going to be a complete disaster and half of me thinks I could PR. Today, I was leaning more towards disaster since my training has been nearly invisible the last two months, my longest run being a painful 9 miler two weeks ago. At the same time though, when I have run lately, I've run pretty strong except for a disaster of a 4 miler a few days back. So, I really had no idea what the hell I was going to do.
What I did do was run a very measured event - for the first 10 miles, I didn't push too hard. I just tried to stay with a nice 8:30 pace which was as fast as I could realistically expect to go today. The first 6 or 7 miles of the course took us through south beach and over the 195 causeway to Biscayne Blvd in Miami proper. I felt pretty good, if not strong but by the time we started heading back the sun had climbed high enough to be a real killer and I fell off my pace a bit heading into mile 10.
Fortunately, the last few miles I opened up a bit here and there; passing a lot of runners as we made our way back to Ocean and 10th, partially along the winding jogging path, which was an interesting challenge. I imagine if you were flagging you really had to keep alert. I finished in 1:50:54. That's nearly 10 minutes off my nearly 5 year old PR, but I did hit my goal of breaking an 8:30 pace, if barely.
The real victory here though is that I ran a real strong half with limited training. This gives me great hope for a strong spring and a chance to finally bust through the 1:40 barrier in the half, my favorite event. In the end this is the kind of race that made me feel good about myself the whole day. I'm gonna just put it in my pocket and build on it starting tomorrow.
