Saturday, May 11, 2019

Ice Age Trail 50 (1/2 marathon)

Ice Age Trail 50 (1/2 marathon) - May 11th, 2019
time = 2:06:41
pace = 9:40
placed 5th in my age group (40-49) out of 50
placed 21st in women out of 161
placed 54th overall out of 269
strava data here

welp... because i was feeling so good the last time i was here i decided to reach out to the race director and see if i could get on the waiting list for either the 50K or the 1/2 distance of this race.  he responded and said he would send me a code to sign up for the 1/2.  

so i did.

to be honest, i really didn't exactly "train" for the race.  i ran consistently and tried to get some longer runs in to make sure i could complete the distance.  last saturday i ran out at the nordic trails from the trailhead to horseriders successfully completing just under 13 miles and it was really fun.  

this morning i woke up around 4am and had the worst stomach ache.  i went to the bathroom and that didn't really solve the problem.  plus... now i was awake.  i tried to go back to sleep as my plan was to get up at 6am and be out of the house by 7am.  that plan was a bust.

i got up around 5am, took care of the dogs, did all my morning stuff and was ready to leave the house around 6:30am.  i putzed around on the internet for a little while and ended up leaving just before 7am.  

i brought frank.  i guess i should state that frank is my new-ish dog (got him in november) and my running partner.  he's awesome!  he's a 7 month old blue heeler aka australian cattle dog.  he's the bees knees.  so i brought frank because i didn't want him home all day without me.  my friend denny agreed to keep an eye on him while i was running.  

i meant to start mid/back of the pack so that i wouldn't take off too fast.  while i wanted to race this i also wanted to do so conservatively and see how i could do.  since being injured for the past few years my new fast is closer to just under a 9min mile on roads and a bit slower than that on trails or closer to 10min miles on trails.  my 1st mile out of the gate was a 9min mile.  so i decided to pull back.  i didn't want to burn out since i've not been running this distance regularly.  it is worth noting that none of the nagging pains that have been bothering me lately were an issue.  NOTHING hurt or felt weird!  my right quad was feeling really tense most of the run but not in a way that was painful... probably just the burning of being used as opposed to anything close to pain.  i pushed on.  i wanted to keep each mile under a 10min mile and i managed to do so except for 3 of those 13 miles.  in fact, most of my miles were pretty steady paced which is definitely new for me.  usually i go out hella fast and then putter out at the end and you can tell by my splits.  this time my splits were really close to each other and mostly i was running by feel.  

as always this race was perfect.  the weather was perfect.  the course was perfect.  the volunteers were the best and the race director is always awesome.  it's no wonder the race sells out in all distances in less than an hour every year.

i've never run this course before so that was a nice change from the ice age trail.  i think i've been giving the ski trails a bad rap all this time.  it was a beautiful run and lots of rolling hills.  i ran most of the hills the first loop but puttered out on those same hills the second loop which might account for the 2 miles i was over 10 minutes.  

i would definitely run this again but i'd rather run the 50K.  we will see what my body wants to do next year.