Happy New Year Aqueduct Half Marathon (1:37:52)

Dale Lister, a fellow High Desert Runner, is running the Surf City Marathon in one month. We had been planning to run a half marathon time trial on January 1st for over a month, and lately the intensity of the run was under discussion. Clay decided to run the second half with us and meet us with water (thanks Clay). Clay is running the Surf City Half Marathon. I was just looking for a nice long run and to help out Dale on one of his hard effort training runs. See Clay's blog and Dale's blog for some pictures and other commentary.

The weather was perfect this morning. The temp was in the high 30s at the start with absolutely no wind. I was overdressed in my running pants and skull cap (I ditched my gloves after about 4 miles). I let Dale set the pace for the first half and let him know that we were already under his 8 minute marathon pace (for a 3:30) after the first few miles. We were talking and he didn't seem to be laboring with the pace at all. We hit our turn around in 50 minutes where Clay joined us on the way back and the pace began to quicken. We hit just under 7:30 pace most of the way back and were at 8 miles at 1 hour, then 1:15:18 at the 10 mile mark. With 5k to go I picked up the pace by just 10-15 seconds per mile and everyone hung on for a solid effort. Total time was 1:37:52 (avg pace 7:28), a PR for Dale!

Mile splits were 7:49, 7:51, 7:32, 7:20, 7:26, 7:30, 7:26, 7:28, 7:26, 7:22, 7:16, 7:16, 7:21.
We did negative split the run by about 2 minutes!

Dale, I think at an all out race effort you could be very close to 1:35. Based on todays run the VDOT calculator predicts a marathon of 3:23:38. I will make my prediction for you and Clay the week before the race. Good job out there, it was fun.

On my way home I spotted Andi pushing the boys in the jogger on 40th to meet her dad and brother. So I drove home, parked the car, and ran out to meet them. It added on another 3 miles to my day. Total mileage for the day was 16! What a way to start off the year.


One thing I have been working on this past year was sending pictures to some of the Olympians that ran in Beijing this summer and other professional runners for autographs. They were not only prompt in replying, but also very gracious and their messages were motivational. I don't know any other sport where athletes respond in this way. I even got thank you notes from Blake Russell and Joan Samuelson. I scanned some of the autographs and hope that they inspire you for the new year.