Buckeye 1/2 Report

So how do I self destruct at yet another race? Well lets see. Invite a bunch of friends over to my house the night before to watch the UFC-88 MMA fights. Well the fights started at 10:00PM so I made some home made salsa, got some of those blue corn chips and even went ahead and made up a batch of buffalo wing dip which goes great on crackers or the chips. Well to make a long story short a few beers later and countless amounts of salsa, buffalo wing dip, and chips the fights end and it's 1:00AM. So I try to politely tell my friends to leave. Come to think about it I may have just told the last couple to leave.

So I ended up getting to bed at around 1:30am... just in time for my 4-1/2 hours of sleep. I'm not sure how many times I used the bathroom before leaving my house to drop the kids off and head down to the race but I was pretty sure there wasn't anything left to cause troubles during the race.

I got down to Peninsula in time to great everyone and find out that for some reason I was left off the registration. Jim quickly took care of this and got me a number (thanks Jim) and I was ready to go. Well I met up with Nick V and did a quick warm up while telling him about the events of the previous night. His friend (forgot his name) and him decided that I probably should refine my goals. Well my stomach agreed with them. So after initially lining up with the 1:45 pacer Nick B, I turned around and there was Jamie with a lovely 1:50 on his back. It turns out that this put me in a nice group of people that I have run with many times. It seemed there were alot of people planning on hanging between 1:45 and 1:50.

Long story short, once we started running things started feeling better. After about 6-7 miles I began to get really annoyed by some guy riding his bike next to us. Well after about a mile of this I realize that he is kinda pacing with the girl in front of us. He kept talking to her and asking how she was doing but she also had an MP3 player on. I can't tell you why but it really started to bother me to have this guy just relaxing on his bike talking away to the girl listening to her MP3 player. Come on, some of us are trying to enjoy a nice 13 miles through the CVNRA. So I was forced to pick up the pace a little to get away from them. I ended up next to the guy pictured with me below.

It was his first half marathon and he will be running the Akron Marathon in two weeks. He trains with the trail rats I guess as he spent some time talking to one we passed. So when he asked about the previous mile and I informed him we had increased the pace to around 8:15 he seemed pleased. Well long story short, I started slowing a little in the last mile and he ended up pushing it on in for a sub 1:48 time. I turn the corner to where the clock is and see the timer at 1:48 and change. I got a sudden burst of energy and hit a flat out sprint to the finish to end up in 1:49:00.

I ran the whole race strong, finished with a negative split, and beat my PR from Cleveland by 1:36 (2 minutes if I had chip timers at the Buckey) and all this on little sleep and poor nutrition. I call it a win. Bring on the bird.

Pace:
8:15
8:13
8:21
8:27
8:16
8:24
8:20
8:15
8:13
8:02
8:10
8:09
8:23

And the last 0.2. (started 0.1 before the start point).
According to the Garmin the last 0.1 miles was a 6:30 pace. Mile 13 looks a little slower due to the hill that was also in mile 6.