Panhandle Half Marathon Race Report
This summer my running was pretty focused on making my goal of running under 45 minutes in a 10K race since I was 45 years old this year. I wrote a blog post about meeting that goal when I ran the Shallowwater Stampede back in early September. My remaining running goals for the year are to simply keep my streak of running at least 100 miles each month going (I’ve run at least 100 miles every month since March of 2011), and end the year of 2013 with over 2,000 miles logged.
With that said, a race that really interested me was The Panhandle Marathon and Half Marathon. Lubbock hasn’t had a local marathon for at least 10 years, and last year they held the inaugural Panhandle Marathon and Half Marathon, but it was during my annual elk hunting trip to Wyoming. This year they moved it back a week and I was going to be home in time to run in it, although I wouldn’t be able to prepare very well for it since for at least a week I would be either hunting or driving and probably not able to get any running in. I decided that although I might be able to run the marathon and finish it, I really doubted I would have a very good time, and more than likely I would really have to struggle just to finish, so I decided I would run the half marathon and try to set a new personal record.
After meeting my goal time on my 10K race on September 14th, I ran 4 miles a couple days after the race, then 10 days in a row that I didn’t run at all, then after getting back from my very successful Wyoming Elk hunt I got in one 6 mile easy run 3 days before the race and then the day before the race I ran 3 miles with 6 – 15 second strides thrown in. So in the 2 weeks from my goal 10K race to the half marathon I ran a whopping 13 miles. Now I needed to run 13.1 miles and was going to try to do it in my personal best time!
Okay, long introduction but that gets us to race day. The weather forecast was about as close to perfect as you could want, 47 degrees and a light 5 mph breeze at the start, warming to about 60 degrees by the time I should be finishing. Tried not to do anything out of the ordinary. Up early, light breakfast, go to the race and was able to do my packet pickup that morning. Weather was perfect. Things were pretty well organized, watched the marathoners get started at 7:30, got my bib and my shirt, did about a mile of easy jogging to get warmed up. There were a little over 500 runners for the half marathon last year, and as we were lining up for the start it looked like at least that many again this year. Enjoyed talking with several folks from the local running club, several of the women that run about the same pace that I do were there and we discussed our target times and fun stuff like that.
Here’s a picture of the crowd looking back behind me.
And here’s the starting line.
Before you know it they are counting down to the start and the horn goes off. They actually had some pacers, but that was a little mixed up at the start. The 1:40 pacer was toward the back of the pack and the 2:20 pacer was pretty close to the front. Those were the only 2 pacers that I saw, although the others could have been mixed in there somewhere. I was debating on what pace to start out at, and according to the race predictors I might be able to run a 1:40, but anything under a 1:50 was going to be a PR so I figured I would try to end up somewhere between them. I ended up closer to the front and figured that the 1:40 pacer would catch me pretty quickly and I would try to keep a visual on him for a while and see how things turned out. I was pretty confident I could get a PR, and willing to risk it a little on the possibility of surprising myself and pulling off a really good number even on the limited amount of running I’d done the 2 weeks before the race. If I blew up, I could still probably suck it up and drag myself in at a PR pretty easily.
The race started and I fell in a pretty good rhythm with one of the women from the local running group that I had been talking to. She was going a little faster than I wanted, but pretty close. If I ran 7:45 splits all the way in it would be right around that 1:40 mark and I wanted to see if I could pull it off. The first few miles of the race seemed like nothing but a series of twists and turns through the downtown area of Lubbock. Looking back on the route there were 15 turns in the first 2 miles of the race. My GPS tends to cut corners on routes like that so it was telling me I was turning out some 7:50 splits, but after I went back and corrected the corner cutting it showed that my splits for mile 1 was a 7:50, but mile 2 dropped down to 7:24. Too fast, but I didn’t know it because my GPS was telling me I was right on pace.
The crowd support was very surprising to me because generally the races that I’ve run or been a spectator at in Lubbock the crowd support is very limited. Through the first couple miles there were pretty much spectators every ¼ mile at least, holding signs, ringing bells, etc. It was really nice. Saw several signs that made me grin and a few even got a quick chuckle out of me.
We finally got out of the twists and turns and had a nice long straightaway for all of mile 3. Back to some twist and turns, but at least these were along a road that actually had some curves to it instead of just going back and forth around square city blocks. The next mile was a slight downhill and then into some slight rollers, one of the nicest areas to run in the city of Lubbock in my opinion. The splits for miles 3 through 5 are all very solid at 7:38, 7:39 and 7:40. A little faster than I was planning, but feeling good and it was slightly downhill throughout those miles and I would for sure be losing some time going back up later on so I wasn’t too worried about it. My heart rate was a little higher than I wanted, but not terrible, still under my lactate threshold on average.
Mile 6 had a little bigger hill to go up and down and then around one of the canyon lakes for miles 7, 8 and 9. Still one of the prettier places to run in Lubbock, but a few noticeable ups and downs mixed in here. This is where I started feeling the big layoff and the mistake of running some hard strides the day before the race after a long layoff as well. My legs were feeling heavy and I don’t remember that before in a race, usually it’s just my cardio that gets me, but my legs were letting me know they were getting tired on this one as well. The 1:40 pacer caught up with me somewhere in there I think real close to the halfway mark between miles 6 and 7. I hung with him for a while and he had about 4 or 5 others with him, but then they started pulling away at about mile 8 and were getting pretty far ahead of me by mile 9. My heart rate pushed over my lactate threshold keeping up with the pacer toward the end of mile 6 and then stayed over it for the duration of the race. Had some pretty good spikes on some hills in there and my avg HR hit 179 on mile 8 and then 180 on mile 9 and kept climbing the rest of the race. My splits were slowing with mile 6 at a 7:54, then mile 7 at 7:54, mile 8 at 7:58 and mile 9 at 8:00 on the dot.
Mile 10 was back up and over a decent little hill, then mile 11 was mostly uphill climbing back up and out of the bottom. I was really starting to have to work at it by this time even though my pace was slowing. Mile 10 was 8:12 and with the uphill climb on mile 11 it was my slowest split of the race at 8:22.
Miles 12 and 13 had some more downtown run around the block twists and turns but not as bad as at the start. Just 7 turns in this 2 mile stretch. I was really having to push it now and even pushing it I wasn’t tearing anything up by any means. Mile 12 picked up to an 8:02 split, but I was pushing redline and slowed back down to a 8:13 split on mile 13. I still had a tiny bit left at the end and kicked it in the last little bit at a 7:28 pace, but I was totally expended crossing the finish line. My max HR got up to 193 at the finish which is as high as I have gotten it in a long time.
My official time ended up at 1:44:25 which was a new personal record by over 5 minutes. My official average pace was 7:58 which is pretty crazy to me. I finished 41st out of 506 runners overall and 3rd out of 20 in the 45 – 49 age group. That’s my age group, not the Clydesdale division. Pretty happy with that especially with the overly optimistic start and just hanging on there at the end.
Looking back at my HR numbers, my HR crossed what I think is my lactate threshold right around the midway point of the race and kept climbing the rest of the way. The last 5 miles of the race it averaged at least 180 and actually mile 12 was a 184 average and I hit 191 for a little on that mile before being forced to slow down a little bit on mile 13. My average HR for the entire race was 176 which was actually higher than my average HR from my goal 10K race just a couple weeks earlier. It’s supposed to be the other way around. One thing I think I can say for sure is that I gave it pretty much everything I had.
Here’s my splits with HR information if you are interested.
| Splits (GPS Interval) | ||||||||
| Type | Distance  | Duration | Total Duration | Pace | Avg HR | Max HR | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:49.39 | 7:49.39 | 7:50 | 161 | 176 | |
| 2 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:23.66 | 15:13.05 | 7:24 | 170 | 177 | |
| 3 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:37.46 | 22:50.51 | 7:38 | 171 | 176 | |
| 4 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:38.83 | 30:29.34 | 7:39 | 172 | 179 | |
| 5 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:39.31 | 38:08.65 | 7:40 | 172 | 175 | |
| 6 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:53.2 | 46:01.85 | 7:54 | 173 | 180 | |
| 7 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:53.33 | 53:55.18 | 7:54 | 176 | 178 | |
| 8 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:57.59 | 1:01:52.77 | 7:58 | 179 | 186 | |
| 9 | Manual | 1 mi | 7:59.47 | 1:09:52.24 | 8:00 | 180 | 186 | |
| 10 | Manual | 1 mi | 8:11.77 | 1:18:04.01 | 8:12 | 181 | 185 | |
| 11 | Manual | 1 mi | 8:21.18 | 1:26:25.19 | 8:22 | 182 | 187 | |
| 12 | Manual | 1 mi | 8:01.76 | 1:34:26.95 | 8:02 | 184 | 191 | |
| 13 | Manual | 1 mi | 8:12.52 | 1:42:39.47 | 8:13 | 183 | 186 | |
| 14 | Manual | 0.22 mi | 1:38.52 | 1:44:17.99 | 7:28 | 187 | 193 | |
One interesting thing is that the lady from the running club that I ran the first 3 or 4 miles with before she pulled away from me ended up winning the women’s race with a time of 1:41:02.
Forgot to have someone take a picture of me with my age group award, and my family wasn’t able to make it because they were at church so I ended up just taking a picture of myself in the mirror.
Here’s my race shirt and all the bling from the race.
Overall a pretty positive experience. Again, I was impressed overall with the crowd support during the race. The marathon only had 146 runners and I think if I had kept going the crowd support for the full marathon would have dwindled pretty quickly, but with a little over 500 runners in the half marathon that is a pretty good sized race for here. The event ran pretty smoothly, but if you were looking for a big expo with lots of vendors and things like that you would have been really disappointed. The post race food was decent with the usual bananas and bagels and some pretty tasty breakfast burritos as well. Not much for bling, just the shirt in the registration bag, but usually most of the other stuff in the registration bag ends up in the trash anyway so no big loss there.
Overall I'm still pretty stoked. Felt like I did about as good as I could have and this still leaves me with a number that can be beat if I decide I want to really work at it and set a goal half marathon to race sometime in the next few years. I think if I had hung a 1:40ish number up there on this it would be a long time or maybe never before I would be able to beat it. Sounds like a good excuse anyway.
Nathan
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