Woodbury Half Marathon - August 30, 2009

It was a beautiful cool, calm and sunny morning for the Woodbury Half marathon - 48 degrees at the start. Best race weather all year! The course gave us a tour around Woodbury's 5 primary lakes, mostly on paved trails. Very beautiful homes and area but hard to enjoy during a race.  It was a very tough course with many short, steep hills - very disruptive while trying to maintain a rhythm/pace. I'm glad I didn't realize the number of hills the course has or I would have been thinking about them the entire race.  My legs were spent by the time I made it over the last couple.  One hill in particular was followed by a sharp left hairpin turn and I thought I was going to tumble into the woods for a second.   I finished in 1:31:27 shaving another 29 seconds off my personal best from 3 weeks ago - my 4th consecutive PR in half marathons this season!  I finished 27th overall among 399 runners and 3rd of 25 in my age group.

I have two more races before the New York City Marathon. A 20 mile race September 12th in White Bear Lake, and a 10k race October 3rd in Downtown St Paul (one of the Twin Cities Marathon weekend races).

In May I talked about a goal of mine to run a sub 90 minute half marathon some day.  At the time I still had two and a half minutes to chop off my time to reach this goal.  I was was able to chop off one minute between my last two races but still have 90 seconds to go.  Since this was my last half marathon this year I will now need to wait until next year and achieve this goal at the age of 53!   

http://www.onlineraceresults.com/race/view_race.php?race_id=11849&relist_record_type=result&lower_bound=0&upper_bound=399&use_previous_sql=1&group_by=default#racetop

Gopher to Badger Half Marathon - August 8, 2009

The Gopher to Badger Half Marathon began in the northwest corner of Stillwater and finished on the east side of the river in Hudson, WI.  It was a very humid, morning and as we started the race there were dark clouds, thunder and lightning approaching from the north.  About one mile into the race it began to pour.  It felt good with the warm humid air but made for a sloppy run.  Twisted my ankle in a puddle and was dealing with a right side ache - something I never struggle with, but the ankle is fine and side ache gone.

The cloud cover and rain helped keep the temps tolerable. It would have been rough had the sun come out to warm up the humid air. The course was challenging with some hills but as we headed south from Stillwater to the I94 bridge we had a slow but steady incline for several miles that was pretty tough.  I finished 40th among 768 runners and 2nd of 37 in my age group with a time of 1:31:56. I chopped 37 seconds off my best half marathon time from late May for a new PR!

http://finalstretch.com/races/gopher_to_badger/results/2009_half_overall.htm