Ilanarama!

It's not that I was trying to hide it, I just kind of never got around to mentioning that I have a half marathon coming up. I started just generally training in July, figuring I could wait until September or October to actually pick a race, and it didn't make sense to talk about race planning here until, you know, I had a race planned!

I had been thinking about something in mid-October; that's when the Other Half Marathon in Moab used to run, which is where I got my PR (amazingly, considering the hills!) but then in late September two of the couples we did the Italy bike trip with invited us to go camping and mountain biking in early October in Prescott, Arizona along with some other friends of theirs, and that was too enticing to turn down. (And it was fun!) But it also meant I needed to have time to ramp up again to get race-ready, so I started looking at November races instead.

It was around this time that I got invited to use Bard, the new Google LLM chatbot (which I think has not yet been fully released), so I asked it about fall and winter races, "with cool or cold weather, in the western US, with a rolling course." Immediately it gave me five races in Colorado, which - I wanted to race somewhere I could use my altitude advantage, so I amended my request with "not in Colorado", and it listed five more races. They looked great...until I actually followed the links, and discovered that one was non-existent (Bard had somehow invented a half marathon from a news article about a high school cross-country meet a few years ago), three were in the spring, and the one that actually was in the fall had the wrong date. So much for "AI!"

So I did a bunch of web searching, and asked on a running sub on Reddit, and got a few real suggestions. I settled on the Berkeley half, partly because my brother lives in Santa Clara and it would be an excuse to visit him and his family (who I last saw in person about a year and a half ago). He's been doing a crossword & cryptic crossword puzzling get-together with friends on Saturday morning for years, and during the pandemic, when they couldn't meet at a cafe, they switched to on-line meeting. One day he invited me to join them, and now it's been a regular thing for me on Saturday morning for over two years! So I'm looking forward to an in-person puzzling that Saturday morning, too.

And then on Sunday morning, the race! Basically at sea level, with that sweet, sweet oxygen; a couple of moderate hills in the first half, some flat miles in the middle, and then a slow climb to the finish which I will hopefully not notice because sea level.

My training has been - okay. As you may or may not recall, depending on how closely you follow this blog :-) my last two half marathons were the new version of the Canyonlands Half in Moab in March 2022, and the Thirsty Thirteen in Durango in August 2022. For Canyonlands, my training was super solid, with 42.5mpw over the previous 8 weeks and 8 long runs, with fairly fast tempo runs, and I blew away my own expectations, coming in just under 1:44. For the Thirsty Thirteen, I trained slightly differently, running fewer weekly miles but more speed and tempo workouts and cross-training, and - spoiler alert - it did not go so well and I just made my B goal, running about 1:47:30.

This cycle, I took the advice of Paul, the world-class 65-year old I met at the Thirsty Thirteen, and put together a 9-day "week" so I could get both tempo and speed in, plus a long run, with two easy runs between. I tried to aim at about 45mpw (that is, per real 7-day week), though because of the mountain biking my average mpw over 12 weeks is closer to 39. (We'll see if I manage to lift this during this last week of training!) I only have 3 12+ mile runs, and although I've been running a lot of tempos and track intervals they have not been nearly as fast as they were 1.5 years ago, alas. And, well - I'm older. At least now I'm at the bottom of my (60-69, how did this happen?!) age group.

So I'm going to be conservative, and say my goal is sub-1:50. It's a stretch based on my tempo runs, but I'm hoping that my altitude bonus will help somewhat; certainly my tempo run when I was in Virginia was surprisingly peppy considering how warm and humid it was. I'm just going to try to ignore how much slower that goal is than my previous ones!

It's still too far out for a real weather forecast, but if the conditions are average for the time of year it should be in the lower 50s to start and upper 50s at the end, which suits me well.

I kept meaning to post about my training and plans, and...I never quite managed to. So, this Saturday I'm running the Thirsty Thirteen. In 2014, the first year of this race, I volunteered and worked an aid station; I ran it in 2015, with minimal (by my standards) training due to our extensive Canadian Rockies vacation and still came in a few seconds under 1:44. (Admittedly, I was only a couple of years past my PR!) I registered in 2018 and last year, but was a DNS both years due to injury that could have been due to mountain biking in Telluride (each time!), so this year, I cannily did not go to Telluride. :-)

This morning, Chuck and I drove the course to give him an idea of what it's like, and remind me. (He ran last year, but due to Covid? or some other issue, they couldn't get the busses to drive to the start of the point-to-point course, and rerouted along a different road, which honestly I was not thrilled with and so I wasn't too bummed about missing that year.) It's soooooo downhill, which means fast, except it ends with an extremely nasty big uphill/big downhill/big uphill again combination.

Other than the backpack trip (which was cross-training, at least!) I've been running 30-35 miles a week all summer, with a track workout and a tempo workout each week, plus mountain biking and hiking. (Normally I've done either track or tempo, because at higher mileage I can't recover enough for both.) I've run 5 "long runs" (11+ miles), including an excellent progression 12 last Friday. As it happens, my last LR as well as my last track workout were the same as I did in the run-up to the Canyonlands Half in March, where I ran 1:43:53, and they were both a little slower, but not much slower. But it's really hard to tell how the race courses compare, as Canyonlands is also net downhill but much gentler, and at lower elevation altogether. So my A goal, I guess, is to beat my 2014 time (sub-1:45) my B goal is 1:45-1:48, and my C goal is sub-1:50. I guess my D goal is, you know, upright and breathing.

I think I've trained as well as I can for my race (this Saturday! Eeee!) and I hope that, as the saying goes, proper preparation prevents poor performance!

Over the past 8 weeks I've averaged 42.5mpw. I've done 6 runs of 12 or more miles, with two of 14 and one of 13.7, and run a tempo pretty much weekly with two 9-milers with 6-mile HMP segments, both of them averaging right around 8:13 pace. Today's 3x1 mile on the river trail (a traditional pre-half last workout of mine) averaged 7:37 for the hard miles, but each one got faster, ending with a 7:22 mile. (Admittedly, the first one was net uphill and the second two were net downhill, but none of them had a lot of elevation change.) Most importantly, I've come to terms with my age-related decline and am not, repeat, not, going to be overly-ambitious and push too hard early! (I hope.)

The weather at this point looks decent - a little warmer than I would prefer, but that's offset by a prediction of overcast skies. There will be a headwind, but the race is starting earlier this year than it did back when I ran it before, so I'm hoping the wind will stay fairly light (which is what's currently predicted). So the goals I set back in January still look good. 1:46:45 (about an 8:09 pace) is really a stretch goal, and I doubt I can actually hit it, but if I can average a 8:13 pace, as in training, it will bring me in under 1:48, which will make me happy.

The biggest wildcard for me is the course, since it's been changed since I've run it. We start by running UPcanyon, and then there's a turnaround, and we run back past the start and down the canyon to the finish; I don't know how steep (in either direction) the first part is going to be. The old course had a very steep downhill near the beginning, which is now going to be more like mile 3, and quite a bit of uphill between 7.5-8.5 and 9.5-10.5, which will now be later in the race (when I'm tired). On the other hand, it's all 2000-2500 feet lower than my training, so hopefully I won't even notice the hills. (Wishful thinking.)

Think fast thoughts in my direction on Saturday!

Today I did my last run before the Steamworks Half Marathon, which will be my seventh time running this race. (I have a standard pre-half-marathon workout of about four miles: two easy warm-up, one easy with strides, half a mile at goal pace, and then easy the rest of the way home.) The weather is expected to be sunny and hot, as it has been every year, which is not my favorite racing weather but that's what you get when you race in June in Colorado.

This will be my first half marathon since I did the same race two years ago. I had high hopes for that race that were dashed for a variety of reasons; this year, I'm scaling back my expectations, and it's possible that even my modest hopes may yet be too ambitious. My A goal is to beat my 1:47:21 from that race; my B goal is to come in faster than 1:50, and my C goal is to come in under 2 hours. I am also sort of hoping to win my age group, but that's not really much of a goal as typically this race doesn't attract a lot of fast old ladies, and I've won most years despite the 10-year age groupings this race uses.

Last year I started out fast, with an ambitious 1:43 goal (which would require an average pace faster than 8 minute miles), but after three miles my pace went north of that mark and never got back down. I hope to not make that mistake again this year. My training mileage has been lower than it was that year (about 31mpw vs 38 mpw), but my overall weekly workout time is about the same (8 hours/week) due to more mountain biking and more trail running (which is slower than road running at the same effort level, and therefore takes more time). I also felt that I suffered last year from having run a 10M race two weeks before, and then having a wonky taper of mostly mountain biking. So I'm hoping that I can maintain a steady effort comparable to the tempo runs I've done over the past few months, 8:05-8:15 pace, and not blow up. Cross your fingers for me!

The last time I ran The Other Half I was light, strong, had just turned fifty; and not only did I set a PR, I was the first female Masters (40+) finisher. That was three years ago, and a lot has happened since then. After herniating a disc in late 2014, I had to stop running for a while, and though I've been clawing my way back to fitness I'm a lot slower and running much lower volume than I was then. Also - and I'm beginning to think this is more of a factor than I originally expected - I've hit menopause head-on, though it's not strictly official yet (the medical definition is one year without periods; I'm now at six months). By contrast, in 2013 I still had a more or less monthly cycle, though not long after I started getting hot flashes and ever more widely-spaced periods.

In my previous post I said "While I'd like to run under 1:40 again...I'm okay with not hitting that goal, which is arbitrary anyway. I mostly want to improve on my last half time of 1:43:46, and if possible, beat the time of 1:41:44 which I ran my first time on this course." Well, I managed those last goals by the skin of my teeth!

I drove out to Moab on Saturday afternoon, stopping in Cortez (about an hour from here) to ride a quick loop at Phil's World on my mountain bike. I met my friends Kevin and Nora for dinner at Miguel's, which is a venerable pre-Moab-race tradition, and then went back to my motel to lay out my clothes, take a soak in the hot tub, and then get to bed early to rest up before my 5:50am alarm. It was a great plan, but alas my sleep has been terrible lately (another consequence of menopause) and I did not get nearly as much sleep as I really would have liked.

I walked the few blocks to the Moab Valley Inn to catch the 6:30 shuttle to the start. A tall young man with a shaved head slid in next to me, and as the bus turned up the canyon and the predawn darkness began to lighten, he commented on how beautiful it was, with a distinctly non-US accent. His name was Kees ("Case"), and he was from the Netherlands. He had just finished the first week of a three-week vacation around the US southwest with his wife, at the end of which he would run the New York City Marathon. "My wife saw there was this race while we were here, so I signed up for it," he told me. We ended up chatting the rest of the way up the canyon, and also hanging out together in the starting area. He would be taking it relatively easy since he'd be running the NYCM, though as a much faster runner his "relatively easy" was still faster than my "all-out"!

At the start, I drank some coffee and attempted to eat the Clif bar that had been in my packet. (Usually I have something with me for breakfast but I didn't manage to get anything this year!) Unfortunately, it tasted terrible to me - it was the new "nut butter filled" and I am not a fan, as it turns out. So I only ate a few bites and then threw it out, but I wasn't really that hungry, and there would be Clif shots at mile 6.

I started just in front of the 1:40 pacer, which was more an accident than anything else. I have noticed that the pace team the Moab races use seem to be fairly bad more often than not - once I was on pace for 1:35 when the 1:40 pacer passed me - so I wasn't planning on running with him. But as it happened I ran pretty much alongside him (either in front of - I could hear him talking - or next to him) until just after the big hill at mile 8, at which point he seemingly accelerated away from me.

What really happened, of course, is that I slowed way down. It wasn't a horrible fade or anything, just that the hills took it out of me, which has certainly happened before. Also, it was a very hot day, or at least, hot for me. I overheat very easily, which is why I'd made the last-minute decision to wear only a sportsbra and shorts. I drank at every aid station, but I still felt as though I wasn't getting enough fluids. I took a Clif shot as planned from the people handing them out at mile 6, but I only managed a little squeeze of it because I was just too thirsty. In retrospect I should have stopped taking water and gone for the sports drink instead.



Here are the splits. I set my Garmin to manual split, as I almost always do in races, but for some reason my watch was misbehaving and frequently when I poked the button as I passed the mile marker, nothing happened, and I had to re-poke it a few times before it actually registered. I also missed the mile 7 marker somehow. So instead of reporting the actual splits I'm reporting the pace per split, which might be .99 miles or might be 1.01 (or 2.01).

mile  pace  Average HR      Max HR    Elev chg
 1   07:37.36	139 (68%)	151 (78%)	65
 2   07:28.61	151 (78%)	155 (81%)	-52
 3   07:27.11	152 (78%)	155 (81%)	57
 4   07:34.76	154 (80%)	157 (83%)	-54
 5   07:33.63	154 (80%)	156 (82%)	-4
 6   07:41.24	156 (82%)	159 (84%)	-20
7-8  08:20.85	156 (82%)	165 (89%)	210
 9   07:27.91	157 (83%)	165 (89%)	-107
10   07:57.92	157 (83%)	165 (89%)	5
11   07:34.99	157 (83%)	160 (85%)	-60
12   08:01.73	156 (82%)	160 (86%)	-9
13   07:18.58	158 (84%)	162 (87%)	-82
13.1 06:56.10	161 (86%)	162 (87%)	-1

A couple of things. First, the elevation change is just the difference between the start and finish, and can mask a lot of up-and-down in between. (Here is a map and elevation chart.) Second, the HR is given in both beats per minute (bpm) and % of HR reserve, which is the difference between resting and max HR. However, I'm pretty sure that what I'm using for my max is wrong and should be lower. This is supported by my max readings being only 165, when in previous Moab half marathons they have been in the lower 170s, and my average reading has been in the lower 160s. Finally, as usual my Garmin read more than 13.1 at the end, though with a Garmin distance of only 13.17 this was one of my shorter half marathons - I guess I'm getting better at running tangents!



My final chip time was 1:41:32, just 12 seconds faster than my first time on this course and my nominal goal. This was good enough for first in my age group (50-54F) out of 42 as well as placing me 16th woman (out of 526) and 57th person (out of 845). Though also, I came in 6 seconds behind the 55-59 winner - and both of us beat all the 40-44 and 45-59 women except for two, one of who came in second overall, the other who came in first Master's female (with a slower time than my win 3 years ago la la la!)

I ran in the Saucony Fastwitch, a shoe I bought at a fairly large discount not too long ago. Good thing it was cheap:



I have a terrible footstrike with my left foot. :-(

I've become wary about registering for races very far in advance, if I don't have to; usually entries are nonrefundable and nontransferable, and in the past five years I've DNS'ed enough races that I could fly to the east coast and back on those lost entry fees. Even though my back is apparently healed (according to the MRI) I still have a sore knot in my glute that makes my hamstring ache, so I was dithering about this spring's Canyonlands Half Marathon, which is on March 12th this year.

Last year I ran the 5-miler instead, as I was still pretty injured, and not running enough weekly volume (or long enough runs) to be able to run the half. Even though I not only won my age group but came in as first masters (over 40) woman, I felt that if I couldn't run the half, I didn't want to go at all. My placement had been due less to my nominal speed than to the fact that other than the top overall racers, it's not a very competitive race. And I just haven't been doing much fast running - I would probably be running only a very slightly faster pace for 5 as for 13.1!

But the Canyonlands race organization kept sending me email, and my running has been solid - 35-40mpw except for the multiple weeks I was traveling and/or sick and didn't run more than 6 miles, which bring down my average, unfortunately, to 32mpw. Finally they lured me with a $15 discount, so I registered both myself and Britt - Britt for the 5M, which he's done for the past several years, and me for the half. I figured, if I can't run the half, I can drop down to the 5M, and we will bring our mountain bikes and have a nice weekend in Moab regardless. (We've got a couple of major mountain bike rides planned in May and June, so need to get in shape for those!)

I have a checkered history with this race, which I've run five times. The first time I ran it, in 2010, I ran 1:37, a PR which stood for years, until I broke it at the Other Half in fall 2013. In 2012, after running a then-PR of 3:29 at the Houston Marathon in January, I couldn't overcome a cold, a calf strain, and a windy, hot day, and ran 1:45:50, my personal worst half ever since I started seriously racing in late 2009. (Race report is here.) Other years have ranged between 1:38:28 and 1:40:25. Obviously, I'm not going to come anywhere close to my usual mark here. But I'm hoping to beat that worst time.

I'd also like to beat my 1:44:33 at the Thirsty Thirteen in August. I was, I think, much less prepared for that race, and I'd been actually expecting to only run about a 1:49, but it's a very downhill course. On the other hand, it's also at or above my home elevation, and Canyonlands is about 2500 ft. below Durango.

In preparation, I've been increasing my long run (up to about 10.5 miles now - I hope to get it to 13 in two weeks) and have just added in HMP-paced tempo runs. My first tempo wasn't so great, as it's hard to get the body adjusted to the idea of running fast when all it's done is slow, but the second, yesterday, was much better: 6.3 miles with some strides and then two miles at my HM heartrate, "comfortably hard". The two tempo miles averaged 7:46, which is better than I was hoping for. But while when I'm running 50mpw, I can take my 6-mile tempo pace and aim at that for a half, with less mileage and topping off at only a 3-mile tempo next week, I can't make those assumptions. I hope I can hold faster than 8 minute pace, which would be a 1:45. By how much, I don't know. We shall see in a bit less than three weeks!

This year's Durango Double was vastly changed from the races I ran in 2012 (Saturday trail 25K, Sunday road half marathon), with a new race director (Brendan Trimboli, a local ultratalented ultrarunner), a new distance for the trail race (13.1 rather than 25K), and only a single distance option for each day. The courses, too, had been changed - for the better, in my opinion, as the trail race made a big loop over two ridges with instead of being a lollipop, and the road race finished generally downhill rather than uphill.

I knew I was not quite in the shape I'd been in two years ago, but hoped to have a good showing. I was also excited about two friends from the Midwest who I only knew via the Runner's World Online forums (and Facebook) coming to run the races with me. I'd posted a photo of one of our hikes on Facebook, and Katie, who runs a lot of ultras, commented that she needed to come out and visit Colorado sometime. The conversation then went something like this:

Ilana: Come out and visit me, yes! We can go running!
Katie: I don't know - I'm traveling to a lot of races this fall...
Ilana: The Durango Double is a trail half marathon on October 11th and a road half marathon on October 12th.
[two minutes pass]
Katie: Okay, I've registered.

She and her boyfriend Thom flew out on Thursday, bringing the rain with them. In fact it rained a lot on Friday, too, leaving me a bit worried about Saturday's trail race. The race director had already announced that due to severe erosion on part of the course caused by the flooding we'd had in late September, the trail course would be reversed (which turned out to be a good decision), but I was concerned about mud. (As readers of this journal know, I HATE MUD.)

Fortunately, things dried out overnight and in the morning - the race started at the relatively late hour of 9am - and when the metaphorical gun went off and we hit the trail, there were only a few damp patches. We cruised up the fairly flat trail along the river, cut across the road, and went up Horse Gulch, which had been rearranged by the recent flooding into a rocky mess. Still, going uphill was slow and therefore not too difficult.


Picture from Trails 2000's photo set just after the flood.


Racers near the top of Horse Gulch

I typically get into these trails from a different access point and so don't usually go up or down the Horse Gulch road, but once we turned up onto the Rocky Road trail, we were on familiar territory - but steep territory. The climb from the bottom of Horse Gulch to the high point of Raider Ridge is 870 feet in 2.6 miles, and I was not speedy, averaging 13:35 pace. I got moving a little faster along the top of the ridge, and then bombed down Flame Out back to Horse Gulch.


View from the top of Raider Ridge, taken with my crappy old cell phone on a training run last summer.

Then it was time to cross onto the Meadow Loop trail, which at this point is uphill but not particularly steep, and take it to the Telegraph Trail which is both uphill and steep. My pace, which had gotten back into 10-minute range, started slowing again. My only consolation was that the trail was in the shade of the hill, and as the day had already warmed significantly this was very welcome. (I was wearing a singlet and shorts, but there were quite a few people in tights and long sleeves. In fact, one woman wore not only tights and long sleeves but a jacket and wool hat, and to my surprise and dismay I could not catch her! I have no idea how she managed to run without spontaneously combusting!)


Why it's called Telegraph Trail.

In the 2012 Double's 25K, when we reached the top of Telegraph we went down the other side, down the Carbon Junction trail. We'd be doing that this year - eventually. But first, we had to climb to Patusky Point. This evil little side-trip is basically straight up a tilted rock slab, then back down; not only is it unrunnable unless you're Dakota Jones (a local elite ultrarunner, who won by an entirely ridiculous fourteen minutes), you pretty much want to be on belay the whole time. I scrambled up, went around the tree that marked the turn-around under the watchful eye of the course marshal, and then ran gingerly down. (Most people around me were walking down, so I made up a few places here, but they all passed me later.)


The white rock slab to Patusky Point. The red circle shows where two people are going up.

Seriously: 170 feet in 0.15 miles, something like 40% grade. My ascent averaged 30 minute pace, but I descended at a blistering 16:42.

That got me to the 8 mile point of the course. Then it was downhill more or less all the way to the finish, which actually was pretty much 13.1 by my Garmin; I only managed about 10:45-11 minute pace here because of the terrain and my fatigue, and I was passed by a lot of people, only managing to pick off a few. I finished in 2:32:39, second in my age group (50-59) out of nineteen, but 16 minutes behind the winner who is seven years older than me, wow. I was 73/197 out of all runners. My average pace by Garmin was 11:50, nearly two minutes slower than in 2012, though this was a slightly harder course.

The next morning it was time to do it all over again, this time on the roads - or rather, on the paved rec trail along the Animas River. I was definitely hurting, particularly in my left hip (which had been bothering me since early in the week) and in my right hamstring (compensation?), but I remembered from my previous double that I had loosened up over the first few miles, and sure enough, this happened again and my run was mostly pain-free.

(Unlike for the trail course, I don't have any photos from the river path other than a few shots taken during a snowy winter. ETA: I have added one of the official photos from the road race!)

The course started with a short climb out of the parking lot and then a gentle descent down a closed road to a trail cut-off that took us to the river path at mile 2. Then it was generally uphill to just past 7, then generally downhill as we looped back through a neighborhood and rejoined the path.

My first two miles were 8:13 and 8:15 pace, but I must have placed myself poorly at the start because a lot of people passed me during this period. My third mile was my second slowest at 8:28 due to substantial uphill, but I passed a few people here, and kept passing people through the rest of the course. In fact nobody passed me after the second mile, other than one woman who zoomed past me in mile 6, then a few hundred yards later turned and ran back, and I realized she wasn't wearing a bib and thus was not in the race.

In contrast to the sunshine we'd had on Saturday, the sky was cloudy, which was awesome for me. I stayed mostly at around 8:20 pace, entirely limited by my legs; my heart rate was in my marathon zone rather than my half-marathon zone, which supports the theory of running the long run after a harder run the day before, to mimic the end of the marathon. (Also, it makes me wonder whether this run implies I'm in about 3:40 marathon shape...)



I felt pretty good coming down the trail in the last miles. I'd passed a good dozen people, and was feeling comfortable, though tired. When I passed the mile 12 marker, though, I started getting nervous. The first several mile markers had appeared well before I was expecting them, and then the mile 4 marker showed up just as my watch buzzed - perfect. After that, as is typical due to imperfect tangents, the mile markers were just a tiny bit late, but not enough to worry about.

But I know this path well, and so when I passed the mile 12 mark I knew that Animas Surgical Hospital, the start/finish staging area, was less than a mile off. Maybe we'd have to run uphill and around the building, which would not be a fun ending. But as soon as I crossed the bridge over the river, I could see the finish just to the right, and I crossed the line at 1:45:31, with 12.74 miles on my Garmin.

Despite the short course, I was pleased with my performance, as based on my average pace of 8:18 I would have finished a complete half in about 1:48:45. I came in 41st of 194 participants, a much better placement than my 73/197 for the trail race, which just goes to show what a lousy trail runner I am. Again, I came in second in AG (behind the same woman, argh, but at least not by as far as in the trail race!) out of 25 runners.

Instead of medals, finishers were given stainless steel logo cups - and those who did two races got one for each. (And we got to fill them with Ska beer afterward!) "Doublers" also received a cute logo hat:



There were 89 people who did both races, and interestingly more women (52) than men (37). I was 15th among the women doublers as measured by total combined time, and 32nd overall.

Whew! Now it's time to rest up...until this weekend's ultra!

I'm running the Steamworks Half Marathon on Saturday, which was actually the first half marathon I ever ran (back in 2004); since then, I've run it three more times and volunteered at it twice (when I was injured and couldn't run). The course is rolling, generally downhill but with an uphill finish (grr). My best time was 1:38:10, the last time I ran it, which was two years ago.

( Key workouts and numbers )

So, that's the plan. My A goal is a PR, or sub-1:35:55. My fallback goal is to beat my 1:38:10 from two years ago. My super-stretch goal is sub-1:35, which would be a 7:15 pace and is probably out of reach on this course at this time.

As many of you know, I have a race tomorrow: the Canyonlands Half Marathon, which I'm running for the fifth time. The first time, I PRed with a 1:37:01, a time I not only failed to beat but also failed to come within two minutes of at subsequent half marathons, until just this past October when I ran 1:35:55 at The Other Half. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure I will fall well short of both marks this year.

( Comparisons, projections, weather and weight. )

So, adding it all up, I'm thinking that I will try to aim at 1:38-1:40. The trick will be to not burn out going into the wind, as that's what got me before. If I can run in a group so we can draft off each other, it will help. And then if the wind really is a tailwind towards the end, I'll have the energy to take advantage of it.

I had been hoping that I would have a good shot at first place in my AG - I've come in third every year but the dismal 2012 - since most of my rivals have been left behind in 45-49, and there haven't been any stellar showings in the 50-54 lately. Alas, when I checked registration status I saw that the woman who came in first in my AG in 2010 is registered, and she's three years older than me - and she blew away the AG at age 49 with a time fully NINE MINUTES faster than mine. So, maybe second place, if I'm lucky.

Ah, well. Britt's coming out again, to run the 5-mile, and we've got some hikes planned for the rest of the weekend. Also a whole lot of my running-forum and Facebook friends who I see only at races (or have never met in person!) will be there. I predict that whatever happens, lots of margaritas and beers will be consumed, lots of conversation will be conversed, and lots of lovely places will be viewed. No matter how the race goes, the weekend overall will be a win.

I'm kind of afraid to write this post, because the last two races I wrote up my goals and plans for turned out much different (and for 'different', read SLOWER) than I'd expected. But I'd never run those races before, and my expectations were a bit different than reality. And I've run The Other Half four times now - my default profile photo is from that race - and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm getting myself into.

( So, what am I getting myself into? Analysis, plan, goals, and other nattering, ahoy! )

No matter how the race shakes out, I am looking forward to it. I enjoy the solo drive out to Moab, listening to audiobooks and NPR; I enjoy meeting my running friends from other cities, who I only ever see at races, for Mexican food and margaritas the night before; I enjoy the after-race party, with many pints of Moab Brewery beer. I will enjoy these things even more, of course, if I'm also celebrating a PR and an AG win, so cross your fingers for me!