American Fork 1/2 Marathon (13.1 Miles) 01:07:26, Place overall: 2, Place in age division: 2
I looked forward to this fast race. I heard that Zak James would be running, so I knew that I had my work cut out for me.
I met Spencer early to catch the bus to the starting line. I turned on my favorite Zen music, closed my eyes, and zoned out until the bus came to a stop--I am a very boring bus buddy. I just love to stay super relaxed and not focus on how long the dang bus ride feels.
I made a quick bathroom break--well not so quick--I made sure all systems were a go. Spencer wondered if I had ditched him. We ran a couple miles to warm up. We ran into Matt and Mike at the end of our warm up (they were unsuccessful in convincing the race director to let them enter the race officially, so they decided to bandit the race.)
I saw Zak at the starting line and took a starting spot right next to him. When the gun sounded, Zak and I got off to a quick start almost hitting the helicopter camera contraption they were using to film the start. I was a bit intimidated by my splits down this canyon last year in the Timp 1/2 as I came into this race and was a little surprised by how much faster the spits were this year. I believe I set PR's in every distance between 5K and 15K if you take the fastest stretches of the race. I was at close to 50 minutes on the spot at mile 10.
I ran shoulder to shoulder with Zak through the canyon. It felt to me like he was pushing the pace, but he blamed me after the race for the fast run down the canyon. I took a GU right before mile 7 anticipating getting a water bottle from my wife at the mouth of the canyon. I didn't provide great coaching to my wife for the exchange and I fumbled and dropped the water bottle. I was a little bugged by the sticky mouth I had from the GU and really wanted a little water. Zak began to pull away from me at this point in the race and continued to gradually increase the gap to the finish line.
My wife met me just before mile 10 with the water bottle and I got a good drink. I could tell that the day belonged to Zak--he looked very strong and the wheels were starting to fall off the bus for me. The last three miles were just holding on for me. There is a quick steep hill during mile 11 that is a real momentum killer and I had a super slow split for that mile. I was able to pick things back up during mile 12--more a reflection of the easy downhill grade than any extra effort on my part.
I never saw Zak look back, and as tempted as I was to see how far ahead I was of the next runner, I decided to just focus all of my attention on Zak. I imagined a fishing line connecting my waist to his back pulling my along--sorry Zak, if you felt an energetic drain at this time :-)
Coming down the canyon I was certain that I would run under 1:07 for the day. The last few miles were just too slow and I didn't quite meet my goal. Looking back it is easy to see that I went too fast down the canyon for my current conditioning, but man was that part of the race fun. I also got to experience looking at splits under 5min/mile which was a good thing for the brain even it they were aided miles.
Having ran both the Timp and AF half marathons with there different courses once you get out of the canyon, I feel that Timp is a bit faster course. It also registered to be shorter on my Garmin. My Timp time was 1:07:02 but my average pace was closer to 5:10/mile. My time for AF was 1:07:26 by my average pace was 5:08.
Matt, Mike, Walter, Steve, Lindsey, Spencer, and a host of others ran great races today--a lot of aided PR on this crazy fast course. I really enjoy this running community and have such a great time associating with arguably some of the best people on earth :-)
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