Yours truly with a medal, when I just got home.This morning I ran the Cannonball Half Marathon in Greensboro, NC. It was my first half marathon in 18 months, and given my lack of training while we were traveling earlier this year, I wasn’t sure how this would go.

I’m so happy with the result! My time was 2:06, only a few minutes short of my P.R. and I felt great. I really should do this more often.

In fact, I only decided on Thursday to sign up for this race. I hadn’t ran since last weekend — lots of obligations this week made running in the evening impossible — and I decided to take advantage of this unplanned tapering.

Early in Greensboro

Greensboro is an hour driving due west of Durham, and I got up at 5.00 am to make it to the start line. The race was well organized, and I liked the fact that they had mile markers on every mile. It was great weather for a run — at the start it was 45 degrees, two hours later about 58 degrees. After the race there was a band playing Blues Brothers music.

Negative splits

I really tried to control my pacing this race. Usually, I start a little too fast in the first two miles, for which I’d pay the price later on. I set myself the goal to finish within 2:15, which is pretty much a 10 minutes per mile, but with the understanding that if I felt strong half-way the race I could speed up. It has been 18 months since my last race, so I didn’t want to start too fast.

Theoretically, if I did 10:00 minutes per mile the first 7 miles, I could finish the race in 2:00 hours if I’d speed up to 8:12 minutes/mile in the second half. (Once, I want to be able to get under 2 hours for the half marathon).

The first miles I ran beautifully on schedule: 10 minutes per mile, and I passed the 4 mile marker exactly after 40 minutes. I did feel strong, and 8:12 minutes/mile is a little too ambitious for me (see past results), so I decided to speed up from the fourth mile marker. From the until the 10th mile marker I ran an average of 9:20 minutes/mile. Unfortunately, the last 2 miles were uphill, so I did slow down a little bit at the end. From the 10th mile marker to the finish I ran an average of 9:42 minutes/mile.

I’m quite happy with the result which is only 4 minutes slower than my P.R. from Raleigh’s City of Oaks, two years ago. A next time, I can be more ambitious from the start. To break the magic two hour limit, I could for example start at 9:00 minutes/mile, slowing down to 9:20 after mile 7. I did like the negative splits though, perhaps I should switch them around. In any case, running 7 miles in 54 minutes will require quite some training…

The start area around 7.00 am.

The start.

Yours truly, when I just got home.