Running Down the Dream: Scout Strong Challenge Half Marathon Race Report

I was pretty proud of myself in this race, because:

I stacked it with a work trip to Kansas City that I needed to do in May.
I went into it with the goals of trying to win, and not running at my max if I didn't have to in order to win - and as it played out I did not race all-out (smart with it being my third race in three weekends, but something that's hard for me to actually do).
I won!
I didn't quit in the insane wind. Seriously!

I figured I would start at marathon pace (6:50ish) and see where that put me. It actually put me in first female from the gate, which surprised me. But around mile 1.5 a woman who I'd talked to at the start, Abby, pulled up next to me. I was hoping that I would get to run with her, because the field was pretty thin out front and she had been really nice and about my same pace. We chatted and decided to work together.

Although initially, 6:50 pace had been really conservative (it's marathon goal pace after all), as the race went on and we encountered the crazy wind, I began to think that 6:55 might be all I had. When we turned out of the wind finally at mile 6, suddenly Abby and I were running 6:20-6:35 at the same effort. When we turned into the wind again, we complained and I said, "well, back to 6:55!" I felt good at that point though, and thought I could crank it down some when I needed to.

I enjoyed running with Abby and we both said we would like to finish it up around 6:30 pace (at least when we were not running into the wind!). I wanted to push the final miles, and around 9.5 on an incline I started pulling ahead. At 10 I knew I'd better push to keep my splits down and to go for the win, so I did. I felt good, although the final mile felt really long running on the speedway and into the wind!

I finished in 1:29:07 with some left in the tank and overall pleased with my effort. On another day, our times would have been more solid, but today everyone had to deal with the conditions (there were just 5 men ahead of Abby and I). I took home $350 for the win, which was super nice! I remember when breaking 1:30 was a major goal of mine, and now it's a non-goal race on a crappy weather day when I don't worry about my pace kind of time - so I can't help but be happy about that too!

I ran a 1.6 mile warm up and 3.6 mile cool down, ending up with 18.4 miles for the day. This wasn't exactly the plan, but nice to know that I felt great with the distance too!

Race results, including a video of my finish (that's kind of fun!).