Cowboy Hazel

Today's race went about as well as I could have hoped, considering the circumstances. I finished in 1:30:26, a 6:54/mile pace for 319th place out of 10,167 runners. It was three minutes slower than my personal best, but almost six minutes faster than I ran the same course last year (which was my first half marathon).

It's great to see the progression that has been made in a year. The fact that, even after an injury left me sidelined for two months, I could come out and run that much faster than last year makes me very optomistic about my progression as a runner.

I got to the chutes extra early then sat on the asphalt for over a half hour. I saw Catherine the Great run right past me (literally, her foot landed inches from my hand) and decided to stand up and see all the activity. Antonio spotted me then and made his way through the crowd to line up next to me. We saw all the greats introduced, wished each other luck, and then were off.

I managed to hold myself back the first mile, but miles 2-4 got away from me. I started dropping 6:23s instead of the planned 6:45s. The hills coming back down the east side of the park slowed me down and I never picked it back up.

I'm missing one of the splits because my Garmin freaked out in Times Square, but it looks like I was pretty consistently bouncing between 6:50 and 7:04 per mile the entire rest of the race.

I caught a second wind around mile 11, but it was short lived and too early. Many of the folks I passed during it came back and passed me again later on. I sprinted across the finish line after seeing a whole crowd of runners approaching quickly from behind.

After finishing, I drank a bunch of Gatorade then parked under the spray from a fire hose for a couple minutes. This woman standing next to me says, "Oh, so this is why my kids do this. It feels so good." It was real hot out there today.

I met up with Antonio over by the baggage claim and learned that he had run an amazing 1:24:36. Shortly after, I hopped on the 4 and headed back uptown. I was planning on staying around for the awards and to see all the elites, but decided that I should get back home and start the whole recovery routine as quick as possible as my legs were pretty trashed.

I sat through an ice bath, drank a big protein shake, then took a five hour nap. I'm feeling pretty good now and excited for the upcoming weeks and months. There was no knee pain at all today, and I'm thinking that this might actually be the end of that whole saga. Let's hope.