Tanya and I are back safe and well tanned from our trip to Bermuda. I will post more later about our trip and our running adventures there but I wanted to first share our experience Saturday running the Fontana Days 1/2 Marathon. It is dubbed "The World's Fastest Half Marathon Course. This was our 3rd time running the race, but it has been a few years. It is a local race, and always fun; but had been on the same weekend as the San Diego R&R marathon. I think that is why we hadn't run it in a while. The course in 13.1 miles downhill, so I assume that is why it is "The Worlds Fastest". The morning of the race you have to board school buses and they drive you to the start. Then it is almost a straight line back to the finish at City Hall.Our goal was as usual to have fun, but it would be great it we could break that 1 hour 40 min barrier. They drove us up into the hills above the town and dropped us off at a camp ground. The buses leave early, so after being dropped off we had over an hour before the start to wander around and try to stay warm. It was a cool and overcast morning; perfect for running fast!
The race started a few minutes late, but that was alright. Tanya and I started off together and our goal was to run the first mile conservatively at about an 8:30 pace. Because of the downhill it is easy to get sucked into a much faster pace, which happened to many of the runners. From the start I knew today was going to be a good day, we both looked and felt strong and had a steady even stride. After that first mile we gradually picked up the pace, I stopped glancing at my Gamin, I didn't want to scare myself into slowing down. We were knocking the miles off, just past mile 7 I began to fall off Tanya's pace a bit. She was looking and feeling good. I tried to hang on but couldn't. Though I couldn't hold her pace I felt if I did some fartleks I would be able to maintain a good pace and also get a bit of muscle recovery while doing so. It worked.
Tanya ended up finishing in 1:37:51 at a 7:29 pace (PR) and I finished in 1:39:12 at a 7:35 pace (PR).
The race lived up to it's name; at least for us and we finally broke 1:40:00.
MJ
5 comments:
what a vacation that was wow. Congratulations on the PR's outstading job.
Congrats. I'm proud of both of you. Glad you had a safe trip.
Thanks, we had a great vacation, have lots to share about it.
MJ
Welcome Back! It so good to hear from you two again. It sounds like vavcation did the run as good as well. Im loving those paces and big ups to girl power. You go Tanya!
Nice job! Fontana is one of my favorite races (you need to get on a later bus so there's less waiting in the cold). The common wisdom is to head down the mountain at 10K pace and hope your quads don't explode before you reach city hall.
One year I set a PR at every distance from 1 mile to 13.1.
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