Suntrust National Half Marathon

On Saturday, I completed the Suntrust National Marathon in one hour, 54 minutes and 14 seconds. This is my third half marathon. The first one was in the lowest place on earth (the Dead Sea), the second was in the capital of Israel (Jerusalem) and this one was in the capital of the United States (You should know, man). There were 2,094 marathon participants and 4,151 half marathon participants. This made the race a bit of a zig zag at times, especially since all of the half marathoners ran together with the marathoners. Either way, it was nice to finally participate in a long distance race and breaking a personal record doesn’t hurt either.

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The marathon expo was a bit disappointing after having seen the Chicago Marathon expo. In the Chicago expo I felt like all of the running stores, sports nutrition companies and orthopedic practices in Chicago set up shop in one place. I was like a kid in a candy store. I did manage, however, to buy something at the DC expo. It was a strap for holding energy gels which had proven quite useful during the race. (http://www.ifitnessinc.com/)

There was a booth promoting peanuts. A woman came over to me and said “Do you want some peanuts?”. I said “sure, what are you selling?”. She said “Nothing, we are just promoting peanuts”. Why do peanuts need promoting? Sun-dried tomatoes need promoting! People don’t realize the diversity – put them in salads , on a sandwich with tuna and cheese, on top of Feta cheese…. Not enough people know the uses and its a shame. (Whatever, More for me…)

Nutrition (from SportQuest)

My nutrition was all planned out (thanks coach!). The day before, I was to take my regular 4 Recover Amino Power pills , 4 Calplex, and an antioxidant in addition to two Thermolytes. On the day of the race I needed to take 3 Recovery Amino Power pills, 3 VO2Max Pills, Carbo-Pro and 2 Thermolyte pills. I’m not sure the exact effect that these pills have but they couldn’t hurt, right? As for regular food, I had something regular for breakfast, a LARA bar an hour before and a bagel afterwards.

Clothes

I love my cw-x tights to the sky (and back). I own the CW-X Insulator Expert which keep my muscles and knees in place while I run. They are a bit pricy but you really only need two pairs – one for cold and one for hot.

The Race

I took the metro into the city. The metro started operating at 5AM which was two hours earlier than usual to accommodate the runners. It was strange being on the metro when every single person was a runner. We were all sitting on the train eating energy bars and pinning bibs to running shirts. Some people looked relaxed and others seemed more excited. Some wore special t-shirts that they had made for the event, some were obviously relatives, some were accompanied with spectators and some were alone listening to music. When we arrived, I wasn’t particularly eager to head out into the cold. It was around 30F when I left the house and I knew that it wasn’t much warmer an hour later.

I dropped my stuff off at the bag check and ran over to the armory where people were relaxing before the race. At least it was warmer over there and I could procrastinate for a little bit. It actually felt a little bit like the army – people sitting a huge hanger waiting for something to happen. Finally, we left the hanger, I ran a bit as a warmup that didn’t warm me up, heard the national anthem, and started the race.
I set my polar in the following way : 40 minutes between 6.0-6.5mph, next 40 minutes 6.5-7.0mph and the rest 7.0mph and up. In retrospect, I should have done these splits by distance and not by time since the fastest speed had the least amount of time. While I ran, whenever I was going to fast, I head a fast beeping sound and when I was going too slow I heard a slow beeping sound. This way I could really pace myself the way I wanted to. Two people asked me if I was about to explode but other than that, the beeping was really helpful.

I felt good the entire race and gave one last push towards the last few miles. At the end, during the marathon/half marathon split, some marathon runners jokingly yelled hate words toward the half marathoners. It is kind of cruel to have the split right back at the finish line. Seeing the end of the race at the half way point must be annoying. After arriving at the finish line, I grabbed a silver thing to cover myself, had an ‘everything bagel’… yummm…

Heart Rate & Altitude & Pace

Photos

Coming soon…

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1 Comment

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  By Janice Speck, March 23, 2009 @ 9:44 pm

  I really enjoyed your description of the experience you had in the half-marathon. You write well.

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