Capital City Half Marathon

This race is held in the capitol of our state, so I've never figured out why they spelled capital with an "A."

No matter.

This race followed my first century ride of the year. Mind you, I didn't finish the ride, and subsequent transition run, until after 8:00 p.m. the night before. The half marathon started at 7:45 a.m. the next day. That's less than 12 hours of recovery between events. However, considering I'll have just a few minutes between events at Ironman Canada, this was probably not a bad thing.

Okay, I'm going to post this now because if I don't I'll never get it up. Suffice it to say, this was a new course, with a fairly challenging hill between mile 9 and 10, which I walked and had no shame in doing so. The run downhill to the finish was great. During most the race, I'd occasionally trade places with these two young gals that were obviously friends. One had not had much training and the race was taking a lot out of her. By mile 10, I hooked up with her and encouraged her along. Doing so, helped me keep going.

When we hit mile 12 and there was only a mile left to go, which was all downhill, I told her we were going to pick up the pace. We did so and flew the last mile, passing a couple of people that had passed us back at mile 11. It was a rather victorious feeling to cross the finish line in just under 2:30. Considering that my PR for a half marathon (Seattle) is 2:22 and change, doing this one in under 2:30 while preceding it the previous day by doing a century is fairly monumental. I have to wonder how I would have done had I been fresh and tapered? Maybe I can find out some other time.

For that day, I was pleased. My cycling was progressing and so was my running. My endurance overall was getting better. All I have to do is keep it up until August.