LAWS Half Marathon

I wasn't going to post a race report on this one, but when I saw the results, I just had to.

I ran the LAWS Half Marathon yesterday in Leesburg, Va. Weather: 50s- total downpour the entire race.

I wrote in another thread that I was hoping to run a sub 1:50. My last half was 4 weeks ago at the National in DC where I ran a 1:57:25. I ran a negative split there and I think I determined that I started out too easy.
Yesterday I wanted to start out "comfortably hard" I didn't run a negative split... but I didn't lose as much as steam as I thought I would and I came awfully close to my goal. My time was 1:51:57 I started out too fast, which is why I've been starting easy at the recent halfs and 10 milers I've been doing. By mile 9, I was in the 9 min. range per mile, instead of 8s. I was a little toasted but I worked as hard as I could to still get under 1:50. And I didn't totally crash and burn.

What a different feeling it is to run the whole thing hard. I could barely talk at the halfway point. Afterwards, my running group and I shivered under an overhang and ate some cheese pizza- we debated: Does running in torrential downpour, lightning and thunder, make you go faster?

And to get home and see that I placed 2nd in my age group was big surprise. Yes, it is a small race and no, my time isn't really that fast, but it's still a PR and I'm happy. I was especially happy to see that it wasn't 2nd out of 2. I think there were around 30 women in the age group. They also gave out medals to the first 100 finishers. I was #95. If I can't brag a little here, then where can I ?

I just want to keep racing so I can figure out... how fast is fast enough to run well, but not so fast that I slow down some at the end.

And I consider this a PR, since my fastest half is 1:47 back in 2004 on a course that was known to be 1/2 mile short.

Thanks for reading...

Happy running everyone!