Richmond is the exception. Richmond will always have a special place in my heart because it's where I ran my first half marathon (which was also my first race ever) and then a year later, my first marathon! I love the course, especially the sections along Hermitage and Brook road, my old running grounds. It's so familiar, but it never gets old. Those are the streets that made me fall in love with running. That first race 2 years ago is what made me fall in love with running. So I keep coming back. :)
We carbo-loaded the night before and set out our running clothes. I was all prepared for it to be freezing the next morning like it had been the last few days. I woke up to a rainy, drizzly, but warm day. We drove to the race, but had a little trouble finding parking. My usual "secret" spot was blocked off. After we parked, we had 30 minutes until the race started, and we were parked more than a few blocks from the start. Then it started to pour.
As we sat in the car watching the rain come down, I was still optimistic that this would be a good day. Even though we were running late this morning, we got here and found parking. Even though it was raining hard, it looked like it would pass over in a few minutes. So we waited. After a few minutes, the rain slowed to a drizzle again. We got out of the car and started booking it to the starting line. On the way, we stopped at an indoor bathroom at the convention center. Score! No lines and no porta-potty! We were lucky.
We were not so lucky at finding the bag check. We weaved through crowds of people towards the UPS trucks, only to find out that they were the trucks for the marathon. We turned around and had to go down a side street to get to the trucks for the half marathon. All the while as we were searching for the right truck, the national anthem was playing. Then the elite runners were off. We finally got to the bag check and made a last minute decision to take off our long sleeve running shirts and just wear our t-shirts underneath. It was getting warm despite the drizzle (very different from how cold it was the last 2 years).
Tristan and I chatted about anything and everything over the next 6 miles. The rain had mostly stopped, with just an occasional sprinkling now and then. But it was humid for November, and we both agreed we made the right decision to leave our long-sleeved pullovers behind! As we ran, I was mentally estimating our pace at each mile marker. I knew we were keeping it under 10-minute miles, and at the 10k time clock, we were under 60 minutes and almost halfway done. I started to believe that we could run this race in under 2 hours!
Now I didn't really have a time goal for this race, but 2 hours has always been a barrier for me. I've only run one race in less than 2 hours, and it was a brutal effort! I also secretly wanted to beat all my other friends and co-workers who were running, which gave me extra motivation. I started to pick up the place just a tiny bit. I didn't want Tristan to notice or get frustrated by me setting this time goal suddenly, but I thought if we just picked up the pace a tad, we could do it.
Miles 7-9 were still great, and slightly faster. At mile 9, we hit our first mental roadblock. Bud was supposed to join us at mile 9 and run with us to the finish, but he took a wrong turn and got stopped by all the road closures. We called him as we were running, and he didn't think he'd be able to make it. I was sad, but still determined. We had each other, and we could do this! I told Tristan I wanted to push it till the end. I said, "Let's leave everything on the course! We're going to finish strong!" Tristan seemed ambivalent to this idea, but she went along with it.
At mile 10, I was the one who needed encouraging. I was starting to feel the distance and regretted pushing the pace since mile 7. We still had 3 miles left to go, and I was running out of energy! Luckily, Tristan was hitting her stride. She kept us going with her comebacks and made funny comments about signs people were holding. We both laughed when Tristan said, "Is that Bud?", and it turned out to be the boyfriend of the girl right in front of us.
Still those last few miles were tough. I kept looking at my watch, and I knew we were so close to coming in at 2 hours. But I also realized we'd have to run a little faster to make it, and I was already pushing the pace as much as I could. I was taking my advice and leaving everything on the course. I don't think I could have run any faster.
One mile left to go. The last mile is always a relief because it's downhill. I looked at my watch and saw that we'd have to run the last mile in 7 minutes to make it in under 2 hours. I knew we'd never do it, but that's okay. We gave it everything we had, especially in those last 3 miles. I was proud of our hard effort. Now we just had to finish, and we could still get as close to 2 hours as possible!
Official 10k split: 58:02
For the first half of the race (10k), we averaged a 9:20 pace.
Over the entire race, we averaged a 9:14 pace.
That means for the last 6.9 miles, we averaged a 9:08 pace.
If we had run the first 6.2 miles as fast as the last 6.9, we'd have broken 2 hours. Still, I'm so happy with this race! For one thing, we negative split. For another, we ran the last 3-4 miles as hard as we could and pushed ourselves at the end. We gave it everything we had! It was a great race. As usual the course was fantastic, the weather ended up cooperating, and we had a blast.
