Smuttynose 1/2 Marathon in the books.
This is my first race for time since September of 2015. That happened to be a 1/2 marathon as well and I ran that with plantar fasciitis. But since then all my races were for fun or to work back from my injury. So I was pretty nervous this week. My goal was under 2:00. But my training hasn’t been great because the hills I run on and the humidity most of the summer. Thankfully we got good weather for this race.
I left my house around 5:20 am to head to NH. It was 47’ out when I left. No humidity. This was a good sign. I had been to this race before so finding everything was no problem. I signed up for it in 2016 but was recovering from surgery so I went as a spectator to cheer on my friend Matt.
The race is well organized. A lot of it is run along the ocean on Hampton Beach. There is maybe 3 miles that go into a residential neighborhood where you can’t see the ocean but the rest of along the water.
I started out in the 10:00/mile corral as I didn’t want to go out too fast and burn myself out. Looking at my splits I clearly didn’t stay with those people long. Miles 2-5 I was in the 8:30/mm range. I felt like I was going slow but heard my updates from RunKeeper and started doing math. I realized I may be able to get under 2:00 if I just stay steady. I guess all the hills I train on was helping because this flat course felt “easy”.
By mile 9 we hit a few small hills in the residential neighborhood and by mile 11 I started to fade. I was sore. I kept plugging along the best I could be realized 2:00 wasn’t happening today. I finished in 2:03:58. The good news is, this is my new 1/2 PR. The race I mentioned above was my previous 1/2 PR of 2:06:03. This means I am close to getting back to pre-injury conditioning. I say that because that course was VERY hilly and this was was flat. I also did reach my goal for the month of having over 100 Miles as I work toward building my mileage again during my new found motivation. I was on pace for 130 but dialed it back when I was in pain during runs and finished at 100.9.
Overall this is a great race. I would tell anyone in this part of the country it is worth trying for sure. I am a little disappointed in myself for not finding my motivation a couple of months sooner so I could have trained more and given this a better effort. But, for the training I did do, I am pleased with my results. It just means that I have room to improve and I am planning to do it next year and definitely get under the 2:00 for sure. Now that I am familiar with the course, if I put in the work, I should easily be able to get in the 1:40’s.
