Horsetooth Half Marathon – Race Report!?
2481 days ago
I went up to the horsetooth half marathon again this past weekend. I hadn’t had a n awesome week leading up to it, but I felt OK and had a good 16 mile run / 3000 swim on friday. I was feeling primed for a Sunday race when I looked online to check the schedule and noted, to my dismay, that it was actually on Saturday morning. Sigh. So much for taking it easy the day before.
Steph was here for the weekend, and I managed to cajole her into not only coming up to watch, but also driving all my running stuff to the start while I biked the 50-odd miles to Fort Collins. I left at 6 with my Mr. Blinky Light and she left around 7, in the car. After getting only a little lost (I have never gone to this race without getting lost, it’s like searching for El Dorado) we arrived with plenty of time to register and go to the line.
I figured I would run steady to tempo, like I’ve been doing out at the res, and see how I held up. Figured I could run around 1:20 and boy, was I ever wrong. I might have gone 1:20, or even 1:18, on a flat course, but this race has hills. Big hills. Steep hills. Lots of hills. Lots of big, steep, hills. Actually it’s not that bad. I got through the first five flat miles in 31:00, including a pee break, and six and seven in 6:00 each before the hills started. I haven’t run up a hill since last October, so they really took it out of me.
So I slowed down. And continued to pass people. I’d gone from 20th at the mile marker to 10th or 11th at the bottom of the hills, and even though I slowed down to roughly 1 mile per year in the hills, I still managed to move up to 7th by the 12 mile mark. Then from 12 to 13, which was mercifully a steep downhill, I ran a 5:14 mile to get myself into 6th place. That’s where this picture was taken.
Anyway, I wound up with a 1:24 flat for 6th place, which wasn’t great but wasn’t too shabby. It was definitely the fastest time of all the people who had ridden their bikes fifty miles to get to the start line. Then I rode home with Mike Ricci, who told me entertaining stories about getting lost in New England and getting chased by a bull (not at the same time). To my delight, he also mocked the legions of dorks out for saturday afternoon bike rides with enough gear to sustain an antarctic expedition.
It was about a 7 hour day all told, and a nice workout. And a fantastic bonus to have Stephanie at the race and so supportive. And even though I didn’t do very well, it was nice to get in something like a race this early in the year. And hey, now at least my clock is clean.
