• Mood: sleepy
• Music: Lincoln Park - crawling

Hills, anyone?

Hills? Oh yes, there were plenty of those this morning in Queens.  I decided to run the Queens Half Marathon as my last long training run until the day.  I had no idea what the course was, nor did I really care. I figured it couldn't be too bad.  Everyone had been raving about the Queens half so why not head over to the other borough to check it out? First, they changed the course this year AND it started at 7am all the way out in College Point.  Oy vey.  The course ended up having way too many turns. And hills?  Holy crap, I had no idea Queens had that many!

The plan for today was to run easy and finish somewhere around 1:55-1:57.  I honestly didn't care about time with the big race so close.  Well, sometimes things don't go as planned.  I met SK and EA at the start since they were adding extra to the beginning to get a 20 miler in.  I had asked what their plan was and they seemed cool with my 8:50ish plan.  Perfect.  7am and we're off.  Mile 1 I start noticing the trend of hills and just hope it's just a beginning fluke.  Mile 2 I click my watch and it says 8:11.  Uh-oh, that's not the plan.  I had a feeling the mile was faster than I wanted but figured I'd give another mile or two to figure out if they were going to race or calm it back down.  Mile 3? 8:23. Mile 4? 8:27.  Once I realized they were having a good race I wished them well and set off on my own for the rest of the morning.  It wasn't tough running but I didn't want to keep getting faster and faster.  Just not part of the plan.

The rest of the race was spent turning, immediately climbing a hill before turning again.  By mile 8 I got kind of bored and keeping the pace a bit quicker made it be over faster:) My favorite hill?  I think that goes to the one a half mile before the finish line.  Overall, I finished healthy and felt fine other than a little cramping due to lack of water from the fasting that took place on Saturday.  I don't recommend half marathons after a day of fasting:)

Splitsville:
1) 8:56
2) 8:11
3) 8:23
4) 8:27
5) 8:32
6) 8:41
7) 8:43
8) 8:34
9) 8:37
10) 8:36
11) 8:32
12) 8:22
13) 8:18
.1) :44

1:51:44 (8:31min/mile)

I'm pretty happy that the 8:30s felt pretty darn comfortable as a long run.  Considering I'll still be running about 15 seconds faster it seems pretty doable.  If I run what I ran the past two weeks together, you know what I get? ;-)

After the race, it turned into a regular who's who blogger meetup.  First, I saw Crazy Bandana and chatted with him for a bit (do I hear #100?).  As I picked up my bag in the baggage area, I ran into Johnny after his 1:41 (new PR I think?).  Finally, saw flygirl.

After I caught up with the TRD gang, we headed into Astoria to a local diner for some grub (mmm Buffalo burger!).  Upon return home, I ended up napping for a couple of hours:) YAY!

So that's that.  No more training to do.  Taper, taper,taper time!

Happy start of fall (as of 5:51am!)!  And since shoreturtle started this, the current forecast for October 7th in Scranton: High of 55, sun and clouds:-D