January 23, 2024
On Sunday, I ran the 3M Downhill to Downtown Half Marathon. The course is net-downhill from Gateway (near the Domain and the Pickle Research Campus where I work) to the Capitol, so the idea was to harness the force of gravity to continue shaving time off my personal record.
I signed up for the race in late December and then proceeded to train for zero miles per week. According to Strava, my last recorded run before the race was on 2023/09/11. So I don't think I ran between then and the race. I am pretty sure I didn't do any long bike rides either, though I believe I played pickup basketball at Gregory Gym on campus once or twice last semester. Basically, I thought that whatever bouldering I had been doing for the past five months should have left my legs in decent enough shape to run the half marathon.
I ran the race in 1:45:05. Things were going fine through the first five miles, which I ran at just over seven minutes per mile. During the sixth mile, I felt a rock in my shoe and briefly stopped to investigate. I am not sure if there was actually a rock, but a small surface on the bottom of my foot was slightly tender. Soon after, I hit a large wall and ran out of gas. My legs felt like bricks. I ran the second half of the race at around eight and a half minutes per mile. In total, my overall pace was 8:01/mile per the official chip time, with 5K, 10K, and 15K splits of 22:05, 46:03, and 1:12:16, respectively.
Two days later, my calves are sore, my hamstrings are sore, basically everything in my lower body is sore. Except thankfully, my feet feel mostly fine. For the past two days, I've been walking around campus at a snail's pace. Typically, I would use my bike to quickly travel across campus (especially to get to dance class in the football stadium), but my bike's tires are currently flat, and I haven't bothered to pump them up yet. I should probably do that soon, for my own sake.
This race was somehow faster than the two San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon races I ran in 2017 (1:49:49) and 2018 (1:52:01) while at the peak of my high school cross country career. However, this was substantially slower than my time in the Zürich Half Marathon (1:31:21), which would have been my previous definition for running a half marathon off the couch. Quite ironic.
I ran a total of six times while on exchange. Twice in the first week I arrived, I accidentally woke up extra early and went on short runs. In April, I made some new friends who then invited me to run with them for a five mile, Sunday hill run on Zürichberg, in northeast Zürich. I had extra energy afterwards and decided to run home, five miles across town. I achieved negative splits in the process (7:52 for mile 6, down to 6:59 for mile 10).
That Friday, one of the new friends offered me his extra bib for the Zürich half marathon which was taking place two days later, on Sunday. So I ran four easy miles that Friday night with one of my roommates as a test and then ran the half marathon that Sunday morning. I have found it amusing to share (boast?) that I beat my half marathon PR by eighteen minutes with only a week (or two days) of preparation. Maybe it is a bit immodest to keep retelling this story. But I think it's entertaining, and it adds a bit of flavor to my running journey.
The sixth run of my exchange stay has no relevance to the half marathon, but I will describe it here for completeness. I joined the Akademisches Orchester Zürich for the semester, and in May we attended a rehearsal weekend and retreat on an island in the Rhein near the Swiss/German border. On the final morning of the retreat, I went on a short run with some of my fellow musicians.
it's probably good to do a little bit of training before running a race. Even whatever measly prep I did in Zürich was useful enough, whereas I could not overcome the wall I hit this past Sunday.
So ... I'm eyeing the Austin Half Marathon which takes place in about a month. We will see if I can continue my streak of waking up early (currently: three days), and once I stop feeling sore I'll see if I can build up my mileage. If it goes well for the next couple weeks, I might register. Of course, this could all go out the window given my tendency to sleep in, but I'm hoping to make some progress.
This post was initially going to be titled "You can't half ass a half marathon" but it was pointed out to me by my sister that that title would be inaccurate.