RACE REPORT: The Greta Gallop

With less than a month to go before the BIG ONE, I decided to do my first Norwegian Festival race in nearly 4 years. This time however, instead of taking on the 1.7 mile race, I decided that I needed to do the Half Marathon instead.

Grete Waitz was on hand near the starting line. She looked as good as ever. If she is battling cancer, then it looks like she won, by how well she looked to me. She was to the right of the starting line, and when the race began she started giving out high fives to everyone passing her.

The weather for this race was very nice. Fall like weather.

Despite the improvements at the NYC Half, and another personal course record in Queens, despite the challenging terrain, I've been recently unhappy about my half-marathon quality. It's been nearly a year since I attained my personal record for a half-marathon in Philadelphia ( see that blog ). My mindset this morning was that I wanted to kick butt. In my mind, that meant a general disdain for the course. Respect, but with a feeling that I needed to excel against it.

The one thing I've been noticing which has become of concern, is the amount I run versus the length of the course. I always run longer than the course suggests. In the Queens half, I ran 13.38 miles, and in the NYC Half it was 13.48 miles. That's .38 miles over the limit. Based on an 8 minute pace, that's nearly an additional 3 minutes of needless running. Why, with 3 minutes less, I could do a half-marathon in 1:39!

Thus my strategy in this race was to cut every corner to try and keep my actual distance to as close as 13.1 as possible.

The race would go in a clockwise motion, with a finish at Tavern on the Green (in celebration of the Marathon).

My first mile was very fast and by the time the race was 1/3 over, I was nearly 1 minute and a half ahead of personal record pace. However, the slide began (as was expected from going out too fast) and by the end of Mile 11, I was slower than record pace for the first time ever. Still, I had the ability to turn this around, and I knew this was as good a shot as ever to break the Philly Distance Run. A race, which unlike Central Park, was done on a completely flat course. Not only was the terrain much more challenging in Central Park, but when I ran the PDR it was dry and cool and not 93% humidity and 67 degrees as was the case here.

Miles 8, 9 and 11 were completed in over 8 minutes each. The watch showed otherwise, but then again the watch showed me completing 13.3 miles when the course was just 13.1. The GPS is accurate. It's just that I'm still not hugging those curves well enough and wasting time running longer than 1 mile for each mile marker. The times that you will see below, are based on an algorithm of taking seconds from the next mile's pace and tacking them on to get a true-up of what my pace was from marker to marker. Going forward, I will be doing this at all races. It will piss me off, because this will mean that my mile durations will increase, but this will help me to focus on running as efficiently as possible.

Enough with the mathematics!

Once I passed the Mile 11 marker, it was time to crank the jets. One thing about me that I have to say is amazing (and I'm sorry for sounding immodest here) is my ability to turn things around when most people can't. My twelfth mile was my fastest, followed by mile 13 which was 3rd fastest of the race.

I was in sheer disbelief when I crossed the finish line in 1:42:33. Nearly 20 seconds faster than my previous record, and almost in the top 15% of the entire race. I did it with heat, with humidity, and with hills. The deadly triple "H".

I am really happy. 44 years old and another PR in less than a week. First the mile race, and now this.

Pictures (and data to follow)

STATISTICS:
Date: 10/3/2009 7:00 AM
Type: Race
Course: NYRR: Greta's Gallop
Distance: 13.3 miles
Location: Central Park, NYC
Weather: 67 degrees, 93% humidity, overcast
Duration: 1:42:33
Pace: 7:43 / mile
Equipment: Brooks Infiniti 2 (Copper/Silver/Bl)
Weight: 158 lb
Misc: Quality: 10/10, Effort: 10/10
Field Placement: 717 / 4309 (16.6%)
Age group: 40 – 44
Group Placement: 87 / 328 (26.5%)
Gender Placement: 579 / 2237 (25.9%)
Statistics: Calories: 1589
VO2 Max: 44.6

Marker……Time………......Accum……....Best Burst….……vs. PR.........
Mile 01.…07:37.56….......00:07:37…........06:00….....02:56.61 ahead
Mile 02.…07:53.29….......00:15:31…........06:16…......01:14.37 ahead
Mile 03....07:44.55….......00:23:15…........06:04….....01:18.12 ahead
Mile 04....07:42.40….......00:30:58….......05:43….....01:27.00 ahead
Mile 05....07:46.99….......00:38:45…........06:38….....01:20.40 ahead
Mile 06....07:46.69….......00:46:31…........06:18….....01:17.53 ahead
Mile 07....07:46.69….......00:54:18…........06:14….....01:14.72 ahead
Mile 08....08:00.74….......01:02:18…........06:47….....00:49.78 ahead
Mile 09....08:06.16….......01:10:25…........06:44….....00:22.55 ahead
Mile 10.…07:57.46….......01:18:22…........06:07….....00:12.09 ahead
Mile 11.…08:00.94….......01:26:23….......06:35….....00:00.58 behind
Mile 12.…07:34.55….......01:33:58…........05:34….....00:17.44 ahead
Mile 13.…07:36.22….......01:41:42…........05:51….....00:21.02 ahead
Mile .1…..07:54.57….......01:42:33…........06:14….....00:20.25 ahead