2010 kennesaw locomotive half marathon

I ran this race last year and you can read about that here. If you ran and are looking for your results, you can find them here.

I got up Sunday at a very respectable 3:45am and was on the road to Kennesaw by 4:15. It’s supposed to take a little shy of two hours from door to door, but I hate stressing about being late and would rather be ridiculously early, and I was. I got down there at about six, parked 50 feet from the start/finish area, and picked up my number. This year, they did b-tag chip timing, which is just a strip that stays on the back of your race bib instead of attaching to your shoelaces. Semi-upgrade, because there was no timing mat at the start. The number of participants definitely grew this year. I noted 258 half marathon finishers last year and the results list 438 half marathon finishers for 2010.

The original course has been changed for the better. The first year had you doing basically two loops of the main sections of the course, but this year, you ran a little further out and avoided circling around. These are technical terms. I’m not familiar with the area, so I have no idea where we went other than we went down a really nice downhill around mile three and the mile 4 uphill turnaround from last year, which you had to do twice, became a mile 7 downhill. Before the race started, the race director (I assume) made an announcement about there being a 1.25 mile uphill at mile 5.5, or I think that is what he said. Later, I couldn’t remember if it was supposed to start at 5.5 or 6.5. Either way, I kept waiting for it to start and it never came. The new course is much less hilly than last year in that it has more gentle rolling hills and fewer steep ones. I think maybe the worst one is at mile 10.5 and it’s not too bad. I think I just dislike it because I remember being tired as heck on it last year.

The big boo-hoo on the course is that you both start and finish with a lap around the shopping center, which is maybe 0.4 mile or so. It’s a little anticlimactic to run in a little circle at the beginning and end, but I guess them’s the breaks.

I ran 1:55 last year and hoped for about the same this year. Anyone who has been looking at the numbers on my weekly recaps has seen my pace steadily decline for about three months, so I was concerned that I wouldn’t even get it in the ballpark. I ended up feeling pretty good and tried to stay steady around 9:00/mile the whole race and finished in 1:57:33 (8:59 avg). My first mile was the slowest at 9:15 and mile 13 was the fastest at 8:48. I have trouble picking a pace and sticking to it, so I feel good about being consistent, if nothing else.

The price for this event went up quite a bit this year. Last year, I paid $40 to register the week of the race, I think, and early registration was $35. This year, I registered about a month in advance (8/25) and paid $60 ($55 registration + $4.80 processing fee on GeorgiaRunner.com). The tshirt was basically the exact same as last year, except on a white long sleeve tech shirt instead of a sherbet-colored shirt (sidenote: I had no idea until right now that the word is sherbet and not with an R, as in “sure-bert”). The medal is nicer and train-shaped instead of being one of the generic olive branch+ logo in-lay type ones. The course is a big improvement and much more pleasant than last year, in my opinion. I’m not sure I’m in any better shape than last year and even though my finishing time is slower, last year I’m pretty sure I wanted to crawl on some of those hills. They also had a lot of food afterward, but I didn’t eat any so I can’t report on that.

official results:
1:57:33
151/438 total finishers
46/220 females
12/36 age group

weekly recap

This week I hit a little bit of a snag with my ankle hurting, but I took off almost three days and felt good on my long run Saturday. Everything else hurt, but not so much ankle pain. This week was different in that I met up with my buddy Katie and her friend (new-to-me friend) Denise at 5am (!!!) on Saturday to run with them. I usually start around 6:30am so it’s still cool, but not pitch black outside since I am alone, so this run was pretty awesome to have about two hours of running in the dark before the sun came up. That and having other people around made the time fly by and it was nice to arrive home around 9am and have the day in front of me. I chose to spend it falling back asleep for 45 minutes, waking up to gnarly cramped up legs from curling up on the couch, and then detangling my hair so I could go see my friend Artee for a hair cut. She took pretty much all of my hair off and straightened it. Here is the picture I took in the car to show Brian:

Then I skated with Lisa for an hour and got all sweaty and ruined it. Typical. I am feeling a little tightness in my calves from yesterday, but ran a few miles tonight and have a light week in front of me running-wise, which is great because I have a ton of things to do for school. I’m running the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw next Sunday. I had something come up that I need to be in upstate South Carolina that afternoon, so that is going to be a challenge. Maybe it’ll motivate me to run a little faster, you know. I would like to get a long run in midweek, but I am not sure if I will make that happen or not. I turn 28 on Thursday…crazy because I still feel like I am about 12.

9/5 sunday – off
9/6 monday – 6.58 miles, 63:54
9/7 tuesday – AM 5.04, 48:13
9/8 wednesday – off
9/9 thursday – AM 3.10, 27:46
9/10 friday – off
9/11 saturday – AM 19.32, 3:19:18 (avg pace 10:19/mile), PM skated 8.43 miles, 56:46

total miles run: 34:04
total run time: 5:39:11
total cardio time: 6:35:37

fall races

The weather has been so good this morning that I finally signed up for a couple of races that I had been procrastinating, the Locomotive Half Marathon in Kennesaw on September 18th and the Athens Georgia Half Marathon on October 24th. I have been sitting in my office imagining being outside in cool, breezy weather but I can’t remember the last time I woke up and went outside to temperatures in the low 70s.

I ran Kennesaw last year. It was a bit of a boring course that mostly ran through office parks and shopping centers, but the pickings are slim for local September halves, so. The price is a little higher than last year (which was cheap). It was a toss up between this one and 13.1 Atlanta on October 3rd. I think my long run the week of October 3rd is about 22 miles and it wouldn’t make as much sense to build the long run around the half because I would inevitably at least be taking some break after the race before running the last 9 miles…at least in September I can either do a 19 mile long run another day that week or it won’t be as big a deal if I’m piecing two runs together. I’m also somewhat familiar with the area that the Locomotive is in and I think it would be easier to keep running around there if I opted to do that.

The Athens Half is the week before the Ridge to Bridge Marathon, so it will be my last long training run. My schedule calls for a 1.5 hour run that week and needless to say, I don’t run a 1:30 half so it will just be for fun. There aren’t any big local races and I did not want to miss this one. I’ve also run the course a few times…pretty stoked for this!

I can’t wait for long sleeve and shorts weather!