Red, White, and Boom Race Analysis—With a Scatter Plot!

As it turns out, I'm much more sore than I expected.  Maybe I didn't respect the half marathon distance enough, or I just pushed hard on Sunday, but I'm certainly in a lot more pain than after a regular 13 mile run.  I did an easy run yesterday in the rain (because I didn't get my fill of moisture from the race), and it helped a bit.  Katie and I also rode our bikes to the St. Paul fireworks on Sunday evening, so I don't know if that helped or hurt.  Either way, I'm going to take it easy today and may or may not get my 7 miler in.

On to the analysis though…

With the official results posted, I'm able to see how I placed in the race:

Overall: 427 out of 2375
Men: 306 out of 1051
20-24 Age Group: 39 out of 77

So, as usual, I did better overall than I did when compared to men my age.  This is something I need to improve.  I don't know how much I'll be able to do that this year, but next summer I'm going to focus on shorter races (and score that elusive sub-20 5k).  One bright spot, though, is that next year I'll move up an age group.  Wait—maybe that isn't so good…

Still, I'm happy with my performance from Sunday.  No, I didn't really meet any of my goals, but I did learn some important things about my fitness level.  First, I need to remember one thing—start slower.  I'll repeat—start slower.  Here is a look at my pace chart from yesterday:

As you can see, I did not negative split the race, and the mountain around mile 7 corresponds to the mountain on the pace chart.  What is interesting, though, is that for the last third of the race, I settled right into my target marathon pace (except for the last mile when my calf went YEOOOWWW!).

Now, what changes will I make for my marathon training?  At this point, none.  I'm still going to train with a goal of 3:45 in mind.  What I will do, however, is adopt a best case/worst case strategy.  Best case on marathon day—I'll be sub-3:45.  Worst case—I'll be sub-4:00.  My training paces so far for a 3:45 goal have not been too hard, so I'm rather happy with how things are going.  As long as I consider that I didn't train specifically for the HM, I didn't taper, and the weather worked against me, being 4½ minutes slower than my goal wasn't too bad.

So, now it's back to regular training, and I get to hit the track this week!