Atlanta Half Marathon Race Report

I wasn't too sure how this year's Atlanta Half Marathon was going to do. As I've mentioned before, because I'm training a little different for this year's marathon than I did last year, I just haven't been confident that my overall fitness was as good right now as it was last year. Well...in this race I proved myself wrong!

The day started with the alarm clock going off at 5:00 AM. The race started at 7:00, but I needed some time to eat and digest and get to the start. I ate a couple of bananas at the house and took one with me. Drove to the Doraville MARTA station and rode the train down to the Chamblee station which is basically where the half marathon starts. Temperatures were in the 30's, so it was a little chilly. I wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt, my regular running hat and a pair of knit gloves that I had picked up from Wal-Mart the day before. I found during that 20-miler in 20-degree weather last weekend that I ran much better when my hands were warm.

I stood around at the start for about 20 minutes and then made my way to my corral. I was in the first corral, based on my predicted finishing time. I think that when I registered I had written an expected finish time of 1:45:00. Leading up to the race, though, I had decided that I would be satisfied if just beat my time from last year of 1:50:00. I really wasn't sure I had it in me to get those five minutes off my time.

When the gun went off, I headed off with the masses down Peachtree Street. Even though it was still very cold, it didn't take long to get warmed up and before I knew it we were at the 1-mile marker. I didn't feel like I was running a quicker pace than I typically run, so I was expecting my watch to tell me that I'd run the first mile in about 8-1/2 minutes. I glanced down and to my surprise my watch says 7:48. I'm thinking "Holy cow, I'm flying (for me) and I've got to slow down!" (Typical running mistake for inexperienced runners is to go out too fast with the crowds and then run out of steam before the finish) I knew I couldn't hold that pace for 13 miles, and I knew that I needed to slow down, and I thought that I did.

It wasn't too long until we were coming up on the 2-mile marker. I look down at my watch, and to my chagrin it tells me that I ran the second mile in 7:40...eight seconds faster than the first mile! This couldn't be right, but I convinced myself that since the first part of the course is downhill that I was gaining some advantage from that. Mile 3 came in around 7:42, Mile 4 at 7:40 and on we went. I really couldn't believe that I was maintaining that kind of pace. It is a good bit faster than I ever run in training, but it didn't feel faster. I just felt like I was in a groove.

At around the 7-mile mark they were handing out Sport Beans. This was great because I love Sport Beans, and I didn't have to carry any in my pocket. I grabbed a pack running by and then headed up Cardiac Hill in front of Piedmont Hospital. This is the toughest hill on the course, and is an infamous part of the Peachtree Road Race each summer. The mile that contains this hill and a slightly smaller hill just before it was my slowest mile of the race. I ran that mile in about 8:00. That amazed me, because that morning I didn't think 8:00 would be my fastest mile!

The last six miles of the course is a gradual incline as you head down Peachtree Street into downtown. But here is where I think my Stone Mountain running really helps me. I read all the time about how hard the hills on this course are, but they just didn't seem that hard to me. There are much bigger hills around Stone Mountain. I still figured that I would probably slow down some going up these hills, but I clicked off a couple more 7:40ish miles and even a 7:36 mile. I hit the 10-mile marker at 1:17:00. It doesn't take an actuarial degree to figure out that I could run the last 3.1 miles in 33 minutes and still beat my initial goal. I knew at that point that 1:45:00 was pretty certain and that I had a great chance of going even lower.

I tried hard to just to maintain a steady pace climbing the last couple of hills. I made the left had turn onto Mitchell Street, climbed the last real hill in front of the capital building - they call it Capital Punishment - and then made the last turn onto Capital Avenue and head toward the finish line at Turner Field. The last portion of the course is downhill, and when I started down that hill I gave it all I had. I hadn't looked at my watch in a while, so I wasn't exactly sure where I was in my total time, but as I approached the finish line I could see the Marathon Finish clock, and it read 1:10:something. The Marathon started 30-minutes after the Half started so I knew that I was close to finishing in 1:40:something. I sprinted across the finish line as the PA announcer called out my name, stopped my watch and looked down. It said 1:40:49. I was absolutely stunned. I really didn't think I had that kind of race in me, and seeing that time was one of the best feelings of my running "career." It was so much better than I thought I was capable of. Come to find out that it actually took me a couple of seconds after I crossed to stop my watch, so my official finish time was 1:40:43.

Final results: 710th Place out of 8,697 finishers

Besides just being really happy with my finish, this has given me a lot of confidence that I'm doing the right thing in my training. I was concerned that my running fitness wasn't as good as it was last year. Not only is it as good, it seems to be much better. The pace I ran this half marathon was only seven seconds per mile slower than the pace I ran my best ever 10K race, a race of less than half the distance of the half marathon, back in February and almost 20 seconds per mile faster than I ran the Peachtree Road Race in July! That makes for a great way to start Thanksgiving Day, and I think that I certainly earned my turkey.