YJP & I drove down to Easton Sunday early (6am-ish) for this week’s race, the Narragansett Summer Running Festival half-marathon. We got there early for packet pickup, walked around a bit, hoofed back to the car to drop off stuff (no gear check…), listened to an obnoxious DJ try to get the crowd hyped up.
My biggest concern leading up to this race has been the weather. As I’ve been running this summer I’m more aware than ever that my pace & effort is directly associated with how hot it is outside, and of late temps have not been kind. This weekend promised a break in the heat wave, and to some degree that was true – at least it wasn’t 90+. But as the race got going it became clear to me pretty quickly that the goal I had set for myself wasn’t going to be met. By mile 5 I had dropped from the 7:30s I started with to ~8:00 splits, a pace I ended up keeping for the rest of the (fairly uneventful) route. The race started fairly late at 8:30am and it got warmer and warmer as the day went on – for the second half of the course I was looking ahead for ever tree, running from shade to shade.
My final time was 1:44:12, a 7:57 split. Unsure how this time ended up being 10 seconds slower than my watch time, especially given that I accidentally started the watch before crossing the start mat. This was 52nd of 336 overall, and 8th of 44 in my age group (M30-39). I was a little irritated (with Nike & myself) that I couldn’t get my GPS to lock with the satellites before the start, so I only have a pace rather than location information. This sucks because I’m not really sure where the course ran and can’t review either that or course topography.
This was my 14th race of the year but first in July. This keeps the #raceamonth goal I’ve coopted from YJP alive. I did just realize that her other goal (#13medalsin13) has escaped me as my only race from June was the TARC 50 DNF (I don’t think they actually gave out medals to finishers anyway so that was probably moot to begin with).
After my race I crashed in the shade at the finish for a while and waited for YJP. Eventually I found her, another friend from work, and a few more folks who drove down to the finish. We celebrated with a complementary Narragansett & indian food.
Next up for me in 4 short weeks, the TARC Summer Classic 50K in Medfield on 8/17. I added myself to the waitlist for this race immediately after the TARC 50, and was just informed I have a starting position. I need to step some things up between now & then.
Song of the week was playing when we walked up to registration, Easy by Faith No More.