Musings on my Upcoming Half Marathon

A number of things have changed with regards to my training when comparing this year's marathon with last year's.  I'm cross training more.  I'm running faster.  I'm doing speedwork.  All good things, and I'm pretty happy with the quality of my training so far this year.  Somethings else I'm doing this different this year is happening tomorrow—I'm running a half marathon.

More specifically, I'll be running the inaugural Red, White, and Boom! Half Marathon in Minneapolis.  I'm running this mostly to gauge my fitness level so I can better predict my marathon time.  Unfortunately, though, I've encountered a bit of a problem:

I've never raced a half marathon before!


Well, it's not that big of a problem, but I don't know a whole lot about how to run the half.  So, I've read a few articles and looked at my training, and came up with a few goals for the race tomorrow, listed in order of importance.

1. Pace myself as I would in the marathon.  In terms of overall pace, I hope to run faster than marathon pace, but the strategy should remain the same.  For the first 5 miles, I'll run a little slower than my goal pace.  In the second 5 miles, I'll gradually increase the pace to just faster than goal pace.  Then, I'll run the last 5k as a 5k—meaning, I'll be picking up the pace a bit more and start racing.  I think it will help me a lot to test this strategy out for a short race before I get to the marathon where I'll divided it into the first 10 miles, the second 10 miles, and a 10k.
2. Finish with a time of 1:47:30.  My target marathon time is 3:45.  A good predictor of marathon times is to take a half marathon, multiply the time by 2, then add 10 minutes.  Working backwards from 3:45, this give me a half time of 1:47:30.  If I can finish in that time, I'll be pretty confident that I can run a 3:45 marathon.  Of course, if I go slower, I'll know that a 3:45 marathon may be too ambitious, and will adjust my goals accordingly.
3. Finish with a time of 1:45 to qualify for Corral 1.  This goal isn't much different than #2.  If I'm having a good race, and I can shave off 2½ minutes, I'll finish in 1:45.  This is big because a time of 1:45 or faster will qualify me for Corral 1 at the marathon in October.  At big marathons, it would be a nightmare to have everyone start at the same time.  Can you imagine 11,000 people all starting at the gun?  So, they divide runners up into 2 corrals—the 1st corral requires a qualifying time of either a 3:45 marathon or 1:45 half marathon.  Corral 1 runners then get to start a few minutes earlier.  Why is Corral 1 important?  It's not, but I've never qualified for something based purely on speed, so by doing this, I'll be very happy with my progress and will just feel good.  It won't make much of a difference during the race, though, because whether I start at 8:05am or 8:10am, my time will be recorded accurately by the chip.

Even though goal #3 isn't high on my priority list, I have to admit that I'm a little eager to qualify for Corral 1.  I'll admit, though, that this isn't an "A race" for me.  It's more like a B+.  I haven't done a full taper, and haven't been training specifically for this distance.  I did get a mini-taper, though, by taking the trip to Baltimore.  I couldn't be as active as if I were home (I did get a 7 mile run in to Ft. McHenry, though), so I have been taking it a bit easier.

Anyway, I'll let you know how I do tomorrow, and if you're in Minneapolis, come out and cheer.  Race starts at 6:30am (early!  I know!) near St. Anthony Main, and winds its way through Northeast.