The "close enough" PR: New Bedford Half 2018

Another long overdue race report! Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying to get caught up on this thing, but then I remember how much I enjoy reading my own old race reports (seriously, every year before Boston I go back and reread ALL of my ever-growing number of Boston race reports) and how having those memories will be pretty cool 10, 20, 50 years down the line. So, 2 weeks ago I ran the New Bedford Half Marathon. I ALMOST didn't do it - in fact, I literally signed up for the race 29 minutes before online registration closed. This race is THE Boston tune-up race to do if you're a competitive New England runner. It falls 4 weeks out from Boston, has been a USATF-NE grand prix race for as long as I can remember (meaning excellent competition across the board), and is a course with its own quirky and delightful set of challenges. Because I have typically run well on this course I think I trick myself into believing that it's easy, but that's a lie; miles 2-4 involve 3 large hills which increase in size and slope topping out with a lovely half mile slog over a highway. The middle miles of the course really are a delight, including a long gradual downhill that is often protected from the wind, giving you a chance to really fly from miles 5-9. However, the end of the race rains on your parade in epic fashion: first of all, there is ALWAYS a headwind of varying degree from miles 10-11. Seriously, I've run this race 6 times, and every single time there is a headwind. There's also a long slog of an uphill that hits just after mile 12 - of course, EXACTLY where you want it in a half!  All of these things considered, I really had questioned whether I wanted to put myself through the trouble of racing this course when I felt I wasn't in ideal shape. But peer pressure and loyalty to the team caught up with me, and so I found myself making the journey to the land of whales, wind, and fish chowder.

The weather for New Bedford is notoriously unpredictable, but this year winter was decidedly still around on March 18 and the temperature at the start of the race was 25 degrees and windy. Not pleasant! The parking and porta potty situations were also complicated and by the time everyone was able to get their numbers, find a locker, and use the bathroom our warmup time was limited. Huddled into the corral with the wind whipping around, I wondered again why the hell I was doing this. I certainly wasn't going to run a PR today, oh no. Just a good workout, don't worry about it, whatever whatever. And go.

The first mile of the race is pretty much downhill which is nice, but this year we were also running straight into the freezing headwind which was...decidedly less nice. Still, I felt better than I did last year, so things were off to a good start. However, during mile 2 I began to have problems. I have this problem, to greater or lesser degrees, EVERY TIME I RUN THIS RACE - 6 times now! I start having to deal with hills early on in the race, and lose all semblance of mental composure. This year it was worse than normal for a couple of reasons - first, whatever direction the wind was blowing this year had us directly in the line of fire while ascending the hills. Second, I had been sick pretty much the whole week before the race (literally the day before was the first time I even thought myself capable of running) and I felt like I was being suffocated by my own bodily fluids. Snot was running down my face, into my throat, I was coughing and spitting and trying to catch my breath which was hard ENOUGH while running up this stupid uphill. It was terrible. I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that between how I felt and how slowly I was running, I wanted to drop out at mile 3. The splits I ran on the hill section (7:10, 7:32, 7:27) were the slowest I've run that section of the race except for maybe the first year I ran it, when I ran a 1:38.  It was bad.

And yet, I did not drop out. Instead, when we finally turned the corner out of the wind and into the long downhill section, I tried to get a groove going. I wasn't really looking at my watch any more but just trying to fall into some sort of rhythm. It took awhile. When I saw coach Rod at mile 5 I must have still looked like a wreck, because the cheers he gave me were something like "it's OK!" haha. I actually took a Gu here, much earlier than usual, in the hopes that it would help me somehow. Oddly my arms of all things were actually cramping up, I think because I'd been tensing them so aggressively against the freezing wind. But whether it was the Gu, the downhill, being out of the wind, or something else, all of a sudden a switch flipped. I then proceeded to run the best middle miles of a half marathon that I've ever run in my life, feeling amazing while doing so. I continued accelerating through the downhill: 6:48, 6:45, 6:31! I started finding my way back past women who had passed me on the hills. Suddenly, everything was glorious! Coming back from such a trash performance on the early hills to now be running the fastest I ever had through this section was a huge confidence boost. We came off the hill at mile 8 but the course stays flat, and I tried to keep my foot on the gas - with an amount of success that shocked me. 6:46, 6:47, holy shit. I was perplexed, but also delighted. How was I running so well?

But then, the part of the race that I knew was coming came...and oh boy, suddenly things were not so delightful. Right around mile 9 you make this turn that every year turns you straight into the wind. This year definitely wasn't as bad as last year (when you could see people's posture physically change as they turned the corner) but it was still a cold blast in the face. Still, for the first mile along the water I thought I handled myself pretty well. I slowed down a little bit (7:03) but a reasonable amount considering the wind and the stage of the race, and I was delighted to notice that I had run an unofficial 2 minute 10 mile PR of 1:09 something as I passed the 10 mile clock. I had a really great mantra running through my head at this point that I can't remember for the life of me, but it was something along the lines of "you can handle this" stated in a more poetic way. However, no mantra could save me from the escalation of the wind as we passed into mile 11 - such a subtle curve in the direction of the road that took the wind from manageable to a whole lot less manageable. It didn't help that I had found myself without a pack at this point, so couldn't draft off anyone or find shelter anywhere. At the same time, my legs were also starting to be like "hey remember when you ran that 10 mile PR back there? WE ARE TIRED NOW". The wheels were starting to fall off.

We finally got off the water and I was hoping for some sort of reprieve, but unfortunately mother nature was extremely cruel this year and found a way to send the wind blasting straight in our faces as we headed towards the final hill. Mentally I really started to lose it here. I was so exhausted and just the idea of getting through the next two miles was already overwhelming, so to have an icy wind blasting in my face to the point where my eyes were tearing up was just too much to manage. I literally felt like I was crawling up and over the final hill - it never seemed like it was going to end. I feel like this last hill hits me differently every year; some years it's totally manageable but this was not one of those years.

But then we made it to the top of the hill, and I knew there was less than half a mile left and a lot of it was down hill. I had stopped even looking at my watch or trying to do math but I knew just based on my general knowledge of splits I'd run over and under 7 flat pace that I was somehow, bizarrely, in position to potentially PR. And so I summoned up every last bit of strength that I had left in my legs and I sprinted my guts out down the hill and into the final straightaway. Coming up on the clock I saw that there was a 1:32 on it. I've only run a 1:32 once in my life and that was my PR. So coming down the stretch, obviously I was only thinking of getting there as rapidly as possible, but I was also thinking about the fact that my PR was a 1:32:34 - exactly the gun time as I crossed the line. As I had started 12 seconds back from the start, my official time was a 1:32:22 - a hilarious, unexpected PR!

Now here's where the story gets a little bit funny. I had run a 12 second PR, and a time that I hadn't even approached since 2015, and it was the most anticlimactic thing. It had just been such a bizarre race that I found myself just sort of being like, huh. How did THAT happen? THEN I went home and looked at my Strava from my previous PR (the NYC half on the old course) and found that my PR was actually a 1:32:23 - so my 12 second PR was actually a 1 SECOND PR. That was funny enough - only then I was looking at my PR page on this here blog, and my PR from that race is listed as a 1:32:21! So was I 1 second over or 1 second under?? In the end, I've decided to give myself credit for a PR performance at New Bedford, whether or not the time was officially a PR. My previous PR was run on a much easier course under essentially PERFECT conditions (low 40s, overcast, NO wind to speak of) so this was clearly a more impressive race in the end. This also clearly means that somehow, I must be fit. This season I've run a near PR in the mile, a PR in the 5K, unofficial PRs in the 10K and 10 mile (both in this New Bedford race and yes my 10K PR is just unbelievably soft- I've gotta work on that), and essentially a PR in the half marathon. That's like...pretty much everything! I honestly have no clue what I've been doing to set myself up for this, as I haven't been doing anything crazy training wise and have in fact been doing probably a little bit less mileage than usual - definitely down significantly from the summer/fall. The only thing I can think of is that I'm taking the fitness I built over the summer and maintaining/continuing to capitalize on it, and also that the experience I've gained racing some shorter stuff is benefiting me in the longer stuff as well. While I still think the half marathon distance is sort of my nemesis (the pace required is just so hard to run for such a long distance!) this race did make me very curious as to how I could bring down my time in the half with an actual half-specific training cycle, which I may end up tackling in the fall. It's funny, because when I thought about my plan for Boston, my real plan was "train for a 5K PR, then train for a half PR, and then run Boston for funzies". I wouldn't exactly say I did the specific training part of those first two items, but I got the results, so I must be doing something right. Maybe having some fun at Boston will yield a surprising result too! Who knows? Running definitely is never boring!