Grandma’s Marathon: 6.2 to halfway there

After passing the 10K, I continued on at my maintainable effort through the next major checkpoint: the half marathon mark.  The course was covered in fog and Lake Superior was visible on the left hand side of the course.  I kept my gaze focused ahead, working towards runners in front of me.  I was running alone, but I spotted a pack ahead of me with women in it and worked on pulling them in. 

I have no idea where this picture was taken,
but we will say it was in this section!

My second bottle (nuun energy) was at mile 9, and my pick up there went smoothly.  The volunteers can't hand you your bottles per USATF rules, but they can help you locate them.  At this aid station and all of the subsequent ones, there was someone standing before the bottle tables who would call out the numbers of any elites coming through, and then a volunteer at the bottle table would point to the correct bottle.  I was never running with another elite at an aid station, so I'm not sure how this worked when multiple elites came through together, but it was extremely helpful for me!  I'd considered putting pipe cleaners or a plastic flower on my bottles to make them easier to locate, but decided against it because I thought that would annoy me when carrying and drinking, but I can certainly see why people do that.

From the course tour, I remembered the bus driver saying that mile 10 on the course was the fastest mile, and mile 11 was one of the slowest.  I also remember reading a blog post about the 2016 event that said the same thing, and my splits agree.  During the race, mile 10 sure felt easy.  There was a clock at the 10 mile mark, but I don't remember what my time was when I passed it.

I caught up to the pack just after mile 10, and they were running in almost a triangle formation like the Breaking 2 project.  I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but it almost seemed like the men were helping the women.  I slipped in at the back of their pack.  No one was talking and I couldn't get a read on the situation, but I was momentarily hopeful that I'd found people to run with. I sat in there for about a mile before I felt like they were slowing and I needed to move on.

After leaving that pack, I focused on a man in a red jersey and worked to pull him in.  I did, shortly before the mile 13 aid station, which had another of my bottles (water with a gel).  I grabbed that without a hitch and was working on it when I saw the half clock and mat.  The clock read 1:24:5X when I came though, and I didn't even think to double check my watch because that seemed reasonable, but my actual half split was 1:24:36 so that clock was a bit off.  I settled into running with the man in red, offered him the remainder of my water before I tossed it (he took it with his gel), and did a little bit of math on projecting my finishing time based on my pace, my effort level, and the second half of the course.

We still had cloud cover and wetness around, and the temperature was staying cool.  I was working on my second gel and tackling the second half of the marathon.  I like to come through the half feeling like I can definitely do that again, and I did (in contrast to 10Ks where I never feel like I can run another 5K at my pace halfway through).  I knew I wouldn't be able to pull of a 2:45, but hoped I had a negative split in me.

Elevation of 6.2-13.1...I think
it's clear why mile 10 was easy!

Splits