As I started the race, I had a goal time in mind and so I sought out the appropriate race pacer. Then I soon passed said pacer. So I caught up with the next one, and then passed her. Then I looked at my pace on my handy-dandy Garmin watch I had gotten for my birthday and was shocked to see my cruising speed was right around a 9:00 mile, and I was feeling really good. I didn't feel like I was struggling at all. Heck, I wasn't even breathing hard! So I decided to just...run with it. As I came out of the canyon at mile 7.5, I could tell that the downhill was starting to take it's toll on my quads as they felt a bit shakey. I actually welcomed the even ground for a while. When I got to the last mile, I was shocked to see that if I could run just under a 9:05 minute mile for the last mile, I could get under 2 hours! So I did. It rocked. I came in RIGHT behind the guy carrying the 2:00:00 pace sign. I was able to sprint to the finish. It was totally cool.
The only downside to this event was how my legs felt for three days afterwards (stairs were a screaming, crying, agonizing trial to go down, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I went down backwards on my hands and knees for all the second day) and the fact that I may never run another 1/2 marathon that has hills again. It was just too much fun, and why ruin the ride with challenges like hills?
