nullog

I ran a race in 2017. I didn’t think I would and I wait to nearly the last moment to register.

I have four weeks of vacation to use or lose over the course of year. I try to spread them out over the year. Looking a head back in early January I had no plans of running any races this year. I did however plan my vacation time around local events that I could run if I so choose to. I also decided I wanted to do Dopey again in 2018, with that I’m trying to follow the ‘official’ runDisney training plan for the Dopey. Last weeks plan called for a 13 mile run, and it didn’t go well at all. I wanted to find a way to ‘recover’ and chose to run The Brooksie Way. I also hope that maybe I would be able to find away to have a fast half marathon to submit a better proof of time for the Dopey.

The last few weeks have been warm, I think that was part of the reason my 13 mile training run didn’t go well at all; race day would also be warm. My training run was on a flat course; The Brooksie Way is anything but flat, with the back end of the race rolling hills and a positive elevation gain. To be honest the hills are not that bad, if you run hills or trained for them — which I have not, Dopey is fairly flat.

Going into the race my current proof of time was 2:24ish. I know I went out fast and that is always a bad idea. In the back of my mind I thought I could go out fast and catch the 2:20 pace group and stick with them the most of the race. The 2:20 pace group went out three minutes before I did I should move up a coral for Dopey. I could then fad a bit towards the of the race if the heat wasn’t agreeing with me and I was confident I could run a 2:15 race.

The plan worked, the plan worked that is until the first big hill on the course, then it all went by the way side. Shortly after the hills I really started to feel the heat.

Official Chip Times (with strava link)

• The Brooksie Way Half Marathon — 2:32:26
  • 10K Split — 1:03:38

The bulk of the hills took place between the 10k and 15k mark, and if one looks at my Strava results my pace was fairly okay. The problem was I wasn’t able to get my legs going the next last 5k, I think I was also mentally done as well.