The Atlantic City Half Marathon
Today I pulled the trigger and registered for the Atlantic City Half Marathon. It’s this coming Sunday and I figured since I’ll be in Jersey for get together with some old college friends I might as well sign up for a race while I’m there.
The course is pretty much dead flat, with a good portion of it being on the boardwalk itself. So if you consider that on top of being only like 10 feet above sea level I should be able to do pretty well. I’m looking at it as the best indicator to whether I’m in better shape now as compared to years ago. The only other half marathon I’ve run is the Seaside Heights Half back in 2003. Where I got a 2:04, but hadn’t trained for it and really hadn’t been a runner since 1999.
This pas Saturday I did what you typically would not do a week before a race. I rode 15 miles to Denver on my bike, then went and ran 13.2miles. The first 9 miles I ran with Shelby and Erin, we then stopped to meet up with the running group and then I went and ran the remaining 4.2 miles. At the 13.1mile mark my time was 1:58, so I guess I kind of ran a sub 2 hour half marathon already. But there was a 10-15minute break after mile 9. But that probably didn’t help much. The first 9 miles were done at a 9 minute mile pace, then the next few were down near 8:30 until finally it crept back up towards 10minute miles during the last mile.
So how will I do with a flat course at sea level? I’m not sure. My preliminary thought is to start out with an 8:15minute/mile for the first 6.55miles, which will put me at 54 minutes half way through. Then I’ll pick up the pace for the 2nd half and drop to 8minute miles making the second half 52.4minutes, giving me a 1:46:26 total time. So that will be my basic goal, but I might decide to start out with an 8 minute mile for the first half and then see about a 7:45minute/mile pace for the second half… that altitude difference might make that possible. I’m just worried about not going fast enough during the first half of the race, because right now I have the endurance but not the speed to make up the time I’d lose. Who knows though… altitude can be a huge benefit and I might be able to do something crazy like 7:45s & 7:30s and end up sub 1:40.
We’ll see… stay tuned.