The Other Half

Four Months is a long time. Things have been happening, though, crazy stuff. It's been hard to keep updating this site. But hey, after a month-long tour of Australia and return to my desert home in Utah, I'm back. More updates soon to follow. I still have to write about my monkey race in Sydney, Australia. But more recently, I ran in The Other Half 13.1 Mile Race in Moab, Utah this past Sunday. This is my all-time favorite run, set near Arches National Park.

My preparation for this race was less than stellar. A good friend and I had trained together, meeting up every Sunday in the two months before the race for a long run. Of course, "long" is a relative term in our great sport. We never ran more than 8 miles together on these Sunday morning excursions. But our time together was great for chit-chatting about the goings-on of our week while getting used to our race pace.  

My friend runs a bit slower than I do, so he was always setting the pace of these runs. We chugged along around a 9:00/mile pace each time. This is slower than my usual 7:30-8:00/mile pace, but 9:00/mile was a nice compromise for both of us. With that pace, we could reach our goal of a sub-2 hour finish in Moab.

But the day before the race, I received a call from my friend. Something had come up and he wouldn't be able to make it down to Moab for the run.

Immediately I had to switch gears. I went from looking forward to a nice, easy 2-hour half marathon...to running the race all by my PR-hungry, time-chasing, self-competitive lonesome. The problem with this gear-switch is that I hadn't really trained to run quickly. I had been looking forward to just sitting back and helping my friend through the 13.1 miles.

But soon I found myself near the starting line of this race, lined up with the 7:00/mile pace group in a pack of 1,200 runners. I figured I'd start near the front, because the officials were only using gun-time (no timing chips!). The front of the pack is a place I'm not really used to. I had run this fabulous race three years prior, starting near the back of the pack. Back then, I'd had proper training, and I had placed 87th/535 in a time of 1:46:54.

At the gun, I just went. With a little push, but not too much, I was able to keep a 7:00/mile pace for the first few miles. Even through the hilly portions of the course, I found I was able to keep this gravy train rolling! It felt so good to be able to keep it up, especially since I hadn't really hit this pace too often in my training.

Near the end of the race, my pace slowed a tad, but I just focused on the amazing scenery around me and pushed forward. Taiko drummers at Mile 11 gave me the boost I needed, and I came speeding through to the end of the race. I used my final kick to pass one last racer about 50 yards from the finish.

And so, it came to pass that on the 19th of October, 2008, I beat my half marathon PR with a time of 1:33:33. 27th place out of 1,200 finishers; 6th place in my age division; and nearly 27 minutes faster than my projected time. It makes me wonder how fast I could finish with more serious training, makes me hungry to actually win one of these things!