St Louis Half Marathon results

Feeling and control has returned to my legs and I am enjoying my first night at home since last Sunday (doing a show eats up nights), so it's time to post my race report, I guess.

Holy Hell, that was hard. Well...no, it wasn't. It was hard on my legs, obviously, because I spent Monday thru Wednesday unable to go up or down stairs, but I didn't really feel the effort in my legs during the race. There were hills...but not the kind of hills in Central Park, where I'd done several of my training runs, including my last long run before the race, my 12-miler.

It was unusually warm for early April, but not a Chicago-marathon-style meltdown or anything.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of this race. I didn't do well...but I didn't do poorly, exactly. I didn't run the entire distance, but I never walked more than a minute or two at a time. Uphills didn't hurt, but downhills didn't help. My lungs slowed me down some (a little exercise-induced asthma from mile 6 onwards), but not anything like the Staten Island Half back in October.

In short, this wasn't a PR half-marathon for me, but it was far from my worst. In fact, I came in with a time of 2:22 - just three minutes slower than the no-walking-involved race in Houston that I remember so fondly. Yet this time, I walked about once per mile.



Interestingly, though I feel my performance was sub-par - poor/mediocre - the numbers say I did a little better than average. I have run 12 half-marathons (more than any other distance), and of those, this came in number 6 - 5 faster, 7 slower. This race, at 10:57/mi, was faster than either my mean or median race times (2:27:57 and 2:26:06 respectively).

So...it's a big shrug for me.

However, I would like to turn the spotlight to my sister. She and I started together and she set a pretty snappy pace from the beginning. I stuck with her for almost a mile and then, after seeing we were keeping pace with the 3:40 marathon pace group, knew I was going "too fast to last". But my sister had a super training cycle, including working with a coach and doing Pilates, and was ready to set her PR - and did she ever! She broke two hours, coming in at 1:57!!! I am so proud of her. She talks about not really wanting to do another marathon - and I wouldn't blame her - but I think she has the ability to do a four-hour marathon and what a feat that would be.

Team Boomer...well, my fundraising was not all it could have been, but I had many donors and that money has been sent on to BEF to fund the Team Boomer scholarships. I thank each and every one of my sponsors and hope I can lean on you come NY Marathon time.

Because THAT is what this half-marathon was - a training run in the larger picture of getting to the NY starting line this fall. I am temporarily injured now, but that is just overworking the legs. I've been resting them this week (and work has filled all my time), but I'll be getting back on the training calendar late next week. I plan on sticking with the weights, but getting better at speed workouts. More important than ever is training for continuous, fluid mileage. I am on the cusp of being able to just. keep. going. and must make the most of it.