Fox Cities Half Marathon

This is a re-post from my blog...

Fox Cities Half Marathon - Appleton, WI...This is my 8th year running this race and it happened to be the first race that I ever trained for.  It is a great point to point race that comes at an opportune time in my Marathon Training Cycle.  I use this as my test race.  I test my fitness/training, race day nutrition, shoes and other gear, as well as, strategies.

On to the race...My goal this morning was to start out at a 6:30 pace and see how long I could hold it.  If I could hold that and feel good, my plan was to pick up the pace.  Beautiful day for a race, as the temperature was 40 degrees at the start with a minimal wind of 5 mph.  I got a good clean start and was able to maintain a 6:30 pace, as planned.  In fact, I ran a 20:09 5k split for the first 3.1 miles.  I got to the the halfway point at 6:30 and that is when I couldn't keep my legs turning over at the rate that I wanted to.  The second half of the race, my pace dropped to 6:40s.  I ended up finishing officially at 1:27:21 and 36th overall out of the 2,773 runners.  I fell a hair over two minutes from my PR that I achieved at last year's race.  And although I fell short of a PR, I still feel good about the race.  At no time did I really feel tired.  My average heart rate was 154, so not extremely overworked.  I felt really good physically afterwards.  I just couldn't get my legs to turnover.  I blame some of this on still being 6 pounds over race weight.  Last year, I was already at race weight for the Fox Cities Half Marathon.

Like I said, I feel good about the race, even though I fell short of a PR.  Moving forward, my goal is to drop to race weight, which should not be a problem.  I have two 70+ mile weeks coming up and that type of mileage will definitely get the metabolism going.  It was nice to get the racing spirit back 

Well done. Not a PR, but a good race. That 6 lb will have made a big difference. You can get an idea how much by working out your VDOT (VO2max estimate) from Daniels' table, based on this result, and then working out what it would be for the same aerobic capacity at your normal weight. It'll make you feel good about your fitness and you'll certainly want to lose those pounds.