PF Changs Rock n' Roll Half Marathon

I figure I better update my progress here. Sunday I ran in the PF Changs Rock n' Roll Half-Marathon. I usually run the full and infact I've never done just a half ever but I felt like I couldn't go out there and do the full in a time that I would be happy with so I went with the half.

I estimated a time around 2 hours and so I got put into corral 6. I knew a couple people that were in corral 5 so I jumped corrals to try and find them. I never ended up finding them but decided to stay in that corral anyway. The first thing that I noticed about the half was how many people there were. My gosh, it was crowded. When you run the fulls there is 6000-8000 people and it spaces out pretty quickly. The half, however, was crowded the whole way.

My goal was to keep to 9 min/mile pace or slightly faster. Shortly after the start I noticed the pacer holding the 1:52 sign. I knew that if I kept with them I would make my goal so I fell into a good pace keeping the 1:52 pacer in sight. My first 5 mile splits were 8:22, 8:27, 8:24, 8:18 and 8:22. I found my family just before the 6 mile mark and pulled over to say hi and shed my outer layer. I figured a little family attention is always good, it costs you 30 seconds but they're out there cheering for you and it's the least you could do right? So my split on mile 6 was like 9:40 (maybe I took longer than 30 seconds)! Mile 7 and 8 I was right back in the 8:20's. Between mile 9 and 10 we say our first mild incline. Nothing too major but enough to see my spilts go up to 8:53 and 8:51 respectively. On mile 11 I produced a 9:00 split but the finish line was just a couple miles away and I knew I had enough to finish strong. I picked up my pace a little and had an 8:30 and 8:40 on mile 12 and 13.

My chip time was 1:54:02 which gave me a pace of 8:40/mile. Another interesting stat that I would love to hear some comments on was my average and max heartrate. For the run I had an average heartrate of 181 and a max of 194. Now I know that I've always ran with a higher heartrate then most people that I've asked but this one seems even higher than normal for me. I mean yes I want to bring that down and I know it will come down with some weight loss and more training. But I'm amazed that I can keep that heartrate up there for nearly 2 hours. Anyway, I'm happy that I chose to do the half-marathon and I'm happy with my time.