So another month went by, and apologies for the gap in posts. I had so much work travel pop up and I'm actually writing this post from South Korea right now about to travel back to Los Angeles. All of August flew by and I have to admit with all of the last-minute work travel I only hit about 75% of my last month of HM training, even skipping my final long run (eeek sorry
@DopeyBadger).
That fact led me into my race day feeling quite pessimistic about hitting the 2hr benchmark I was training for, but I had a glimmer of hope that I'd get that sub-2:08 time to qualify me for the front corrals at MW2023.
On race day, I woke up early feeling as ready to go as I possibly could. I decided to run with the 2hr pace group to help lock-in a rhythm, and we had an awesome pacer who was a joy to run with. The only downside (but maybe upside too) was that the 2hr pace group was massive and I ended up in a group jockeying to stay at the front of it which I'm sure was a waste of energy on my part.
That being said, I highly recommend the Santa Rosa HM for anyone looking for a Northern California race. It was extremely well organized, the weather was almost exactly what I predicted based on my convos about historical race temps with
@DopeyBadger, and the course is beautiful despite it being very close to an out and back type course. You run on Santa Rosa's beautiful creek-side trail (which did lead to some bottlenecks up top) before turning around and coming back. My only complaint was the inconsistent fueling stations which didn't match the descriptions online.
And that takes me to my running! I really felt strong starting off. I fueled up appropriately that morning and the pace group was feeling right on the money. Around mile 9 I started getting in my head and felt like I needed a walk break. I did MW2022 on run/walk intervals and while I didn't train with run/walk intervals this time around, I was really feeling the need to take 45 sec breaks to reset, shake out my legs and arms, and take in some water. So I ended up slowly falling behind the 2hr pace group at mile 9.25 or so, but they were in sight until mile 11 when I ended up taking another 45sec walk break - and I continued with 5 mins on 45 secs off until the end. Once it was clear to me I wouldn't hit the 2hr mark, I ended up just making sure to hit the middle of my "new" 2:00-2:08 target -- and I finished strong with a time of 2:04:21 and a pace of 9:30 min/mile.
While it wasn't the sub-2hr HM I was hoping for, this feels like a MAJOR win to me especially coming off a train slow to race fast program (none of my long runs were anywhere close to this pace and they were almost a full minute slower!) as well as a lackluster final three weeks of training.
Right after the race, I got a major breakfast refuel, took a quick shower, and headed straight to the airport to head to Seoul for work where I've been for the past week -- and only now do I have a minute to take a break and write this recap!
I learned a lot from this training process and have a LOT to owe to
@DopeyBadger (don't we all somehow!?). I was skeptical of the train slow to race fast mentality upfront, but it really paid off on race day. Even though I was slower than the target, it was still much faster than any long run I've done in the past few years. And with the context that this race was just the kickoff to a larger Dopey plan for MW2023, I am happy with the results and driven harder to have a more disciplined fall/winter to destroy Dopey in January.