This past weekend I ran my first half marathon. I finished with a slow 13:00min per mile pace, but I finished. The first 3 miles went really well. I was averaging roughly 11:30 per mile and keeping up with the 2:30 pacer. Then the race started to go up a hill and there was a water station.
Drinking and running is a difficult task that needs to be practice
Boy was I not prepared for running and drinking. I almost chocked and had to start walking. The next 3 miles went OK. They weren’t great and my time started to slip to around 12:00 minutes per mile. At this point the sun started to come up. By the half way point I started to overheat.
How does one not overheat?
I wasn’t tired. My legs weren’t hurting, I wasn’t out of breath, but I couldn’t go on as I overheated. You know that tunnel vision feeling before you pass out? That started and I had to start walking. From this point on it was heat management. Every water station was a godsend. My time started to slip more to 13:00 minutes per mile. I would run half a mile and then need to cool down and walk a tenth of a mile. Around the 8 mile mark was a food station.
Energy gels are ridiculously gross.
I don’t remember the brand but I hear this a lot, energy gels are terrible. After running for 8 miles, starting to dehydrate, the last thing I want to eat is something overly sweet. I would rather eat something bland without flavor than what was given.
The last 4 miles was were my body started to hurt. It was manageable pain, but pain nonetheless. I slowed down even more to around 14:00 minutes per mile. The last couple miles were run 1-2 tenths of a mile and walk a tenth of a mile. It was mainly mental strength at this point.
Afterwards I felt OK. I drank a lot of water, Gatorade, and milk (love having chocolate milk at the end of a race) and felt much better after cooling down. I even walked around a lot the rest of the day and felt fine. I need to figure out how to cool down during a race. I also think running more frequent long runs would help my endurance later in the race. My next race is in April. I could run another in October but it’s super late registration and a large sum of money to run. I liked the race, but paying a ton of money to endure more pain is not high on my list of wants.
