This Sunday was the 12th Annual Inside-Out Sports Classic Half Marathon, possibly the least concise event name ever constructed but a fun and popular local event. I haven’t really been training for a distance event aside from tossing a couple more miles onto my weekly 5K training long runs. I figured I’d still be okay after the year of marathon training. I guess we’ll see.

Prerace

Luckily this race is very local for me. 7 minutes of driving and I’m at the starting line. With a 7:00 am start I got up around 5ish and had some food and drink then futzed around trying to wake up. I’d love to say I sleep perfectly before a race but I don’t. I got to sleep fine but our cat decided to pray to its Egyptian gods or something at about 11:00 and I had a hell of a time shutting my noggin back down and getting back to sleep. Ah well. After a quick pitstop at the grocery store to grab some Gatorade and hit the restroom I was parked and making my way to the start. I decided against carrying my own bottles and Gu this time. It’s 13 miles! There would be water stations and I wouldn’t hit any conceivable glycogen depletion wall within 2 hours so what’s the point?

I picked up my race chip and realized that nature was calling one final time. The lines for the portapotties were astounding and there was exactly 3 minutes before the gun. Nature time. With my bladder relieved I made my way to the starting area and had just enough time for a few little arm swings and leg stretches — notably missing my right Achilles which will become important later — and then the gun sounded. Away we go on my first official half marathon distance.

The first half

I was fairly far back in the pack after my nature pee so I dodged a bunch in the early stages. I didn’t have too many concrete goals for this race aside from finish and hopefully beat my previous PR from the first half of Shamrock at 1:58:44. That’s it. I wasn’t going out hard because I hadn’t been training for a hard half. I just wanted to run the race. Early on I targeted between 8:30 and 8:45 for lack of any better goal.

The IOS Classic is a hilly little beast, at least to me who isn’t used to hills. I mean sure, we don’t have anything gargantuan here but there is a fair amount of elevation change across the whole course. The course starts with a snarky little downhill that breaks many a heart because the course is nominally out and back. People think “egad, I have to run back up this on the way to the finish?!” but they don’t. That’s not to say there isn’t a hill at the end, but we’re not there yet.

The first 5K presents a fairly steady, mild incline. It’s hard to even notice that you’re climbing, honestly. Given the strict “no headphone” ruling at risk of being DQed and banned from future runnings of the event I obviously didn’t wear mine. I still saw several people who did and I marvel at their temerity. Honestly, what doesn’t compute? Eh, whatever. I’ve been running without it more and more so it didn’t present any particular difficulties. Water stops were provided very early on — like a third of a mile in, honestly… I skipped it — but that was primarily to cover the return trip at around 11 miles.

In the early going I admit it: I wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it was my week — my mother was admitted to the hospital on Friday due to weakness and dehydration from the chemo — maybe it was the poor sleep, I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it. I could easily have stopped along the side of the road, waited for everyone to pass and headed back to my car. I recently talked about the difficult of maintaining enthusiasm in the face of everything but this was it, all distilled down into a minute on the road. I thought about it and really considered it. But why would I have quit? Because it hurt? No. Because I had to? No. Just because I didn’t feel like it? That ain’t enough. So I kept going.

At the first water station I decided I was going to walk through the water stations. Why not? It didn’t help that my first sip went straight up my nostril. So perhaps “decided” is too strong. I grabbed a cup of water and one of Gatorade and chugged them both, tossed the cups in the trash can and was off again. Maybe 10 seconds of walking. Not bad, not bad. I wasn’t think so much about not feeling it, I was just running. I was at the top of the gradual incline and facing the downhills. That’s cake. I was still on-pace at around 8:40 and taking it rather easy.

There’s a rather noticeable downhill trend from 3 miles into about 4 and 3/4 miles which I was dreading the return trip up. Out and backs are dandy until you realize that all of these declines are soon to be inclines. Then I hit the 5 mile “marker” — there were no actual mile markers on the course which is a bit weird… many people asking the mileage — and the mystery incline. During my “preview” I’d turned around at the 5 mile mark to do my scheduled 10. Now I had to keep going approximately another mile. Being unknown it worked it’s mysterious influence on me. I knew that I had an incline on the return trip from miles 7 to mile 9.5… I just didn’t know what mile 5 through 6 and through 7 looked like. I was hoping for a nice level area to give me a breather in preparation for the inevitable climb I knew I faced. No such luck. I thought the damned thing would never end. I got to the turnaround — with its water station, thankfully — and at least enjoyed a bit of downhill leading to the big climb.

The last half

I finally saw my boss, Scott, at the turnaround. I knew he was racing but didn’t have time to seek him out before the race and hadn’t seen him. Prior to the turnaround I thought I saw him up ahead but couldn’t be sure. At the turnaround we traversed a little loop in the trail and I saw that it was definitely him but it ended up that he didn’t see me. So I’m sure he had some confusion wondering where I could have been since, given an almost 100% out and back he would have seen me at some point.

I made it to the bottom of the decline at mile 7 and started The Big Climb. This ascent start on a bit of a switchback that is probably the worst of the climb in all honesty, climbing 200 feet steadily for a mile. I was slowly reeling Scott in and was also caught by a very nice young lady who complimented me on my shirt and told me she had caught up with me to tell me about that and her own mother’s battle with cancer. I thought that was wonderful of her and thanked her. The climb leveled off a bit but heads back up again after a while and I finally caught Scott about 8 and 1/4 miles in at the base of the beginning of the steepest part of the climb.

“After this that it for the yucky parts, Boss,” I said as I prepared to pull even with him.

“There you are. I wondered where you’ve been,” he huffed. I told him let’s save our breath until the top of the hill. The climb was pretty brutal with me topping off at 179 on the heartrate monitor. But I didn’t walk any of the climbs. I was proud of that. Scott said he was feeling pretty good until the start of the big climb at mile 7. Then he started feeling beat. I commiserated as those are some taxing climbs. I decided at that point to help bring him in. This was his first time ever going longer than 10 miles and he was starting to struggle a bit; we were also supposed to be running together anyway since there were no iPods allowed. So I started pacing him and we got our minds off the race a bit lamenting idiotic customers and silly requests. His goal was to maintain sub 9-minute miles so we both kept each other honest on pace.

At 9.5 miles in the vast bulk of the inclines are done. There might be some surprises at the end — and there was — but it’s a net downhill from here which was nice. So we cruised over the final portions inside Umstead, popped over I40 and hit the final water station before veering off the out and back and onto fresh territory on the greenway.

“Why are we going this way?” I joked with the course marshal who told us to turn. “It’s a whole lot shorter if we go back the way we came.” It got some chuckles from him and the water station people but for all I know that was the 500th time they’d heard it. The greenway section was another fairly straightforward out and back, though because it was unknown and near the end it felt longer than it had any right to feel. Those late miles you start picturing being done and looking for the turnaround point to head for home. Scott and I ran together and I took the lead down the greenway because it got really narrow especially when you had facing traffic coming back. We finally reached the turnaround and there was a little over a half a mile to go.

We branched off the greenway out and back to head up to the finish line and met the final surprise. A nice little steep 75 foot climb in the final quarter of a mile. I started up it and my previously unstretched right Achilles tendon decided it wanted to seize up. Oh wow did it twinge hard on me. This was right about the time that I spotted Cat and Julia and they spotted me. So there I am leading Scott up the hill, trying to keep running while my tendon wants to snap. Not the most enjoyable part of the race. But I got up to the girls and gave Julia a high five and made the turn into the parking lot where the finish line was. Scott was behind me so I eased up until we were side-by-side and we crossed the line together.

With all of that I ended up with a new PR of 1:57:18.

Thoughts and conclusions

Very weird race for me. My heart hasn’t been in it and I didn’t turn my personal issues into motivation. I could and should have used the things going on as fuel or at least viewed the running as an escape. Something to think about.

I’m pleased with how it went, really, aside from my Achilles. It’s a little sore today but nothing earth-shattering. I didn’t push anything and felt quite good — aside from the early race “blah” — and it was a good feeling helping a friend reach his goal. He would have made it without me, I know, but hopefully it helped some. I probably could have scraped some additional time from my PR if I hadn’t slowed down to run with Scott but so what? There will be more races and it felt like the right thing to do. I think on a more forgiving course I have a much faster PR ahead of me.

The race itself was a mixture of fine and not so great. Aid stations were plentiful during the race but the lack of mile markers was disappointing; I know there’s some regulatory issue surrounding them but that’s not my problem. I miss having official splits. Volunteers were fantastic but the finish area was a bit crazy with giant lines for food and drink. I prefer the style of finishing corral at Shamrock (an admittedly larger event) where you finished and then stumbled at your own pace through a long runner recovery area with the finisher swag, then a water station, then various foodstuffs all as you walk along.

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