Eugene Half Marathon Race Report

I feel like my race reports are getting boring! I have been running a lot of races this spring, I haven't had any spectacular results or triumphs... so I am going to try this a little different.

In fact, I tried doing a lot of stuff differently recently. I kind of adopted Petra/George Costanza "Opposite" thing. You know, do the opposite of what you normally do. Go against your instincts. So in really minor ways I switched it up. I'm usually pretty anxious and obsessive and lately I'm loosey goosey! The training was nonspecific- no schedule, whatevs on the pace.. and that was working well. Then for the race- I didn't pack until the morning we left, I had pizza and a beer the night before the race, I tried on the race t-shirt before the race (it was too big), stuff like that. The good news is, it didn't make my race any worse! The bad news is, it didn't make it any better.

I finished in an unoriginal 1:45:51 (8:05 ave). I guess it's cool that I'm consistent and that is a good time for sure, but it kind of turns out less isn't more. I have got to get serious with my training. More importantly, I think I really need to clean up my eating and drinking and get in better shape. Ugh!

Anyway, the half marathon course was more difficult than I had imagined, but it was a fabulous race. Gorgeous little green Oregon college town and Everyone is all about running. Good beer, good people, amazing runners, Hayward Field, you just can't beat it. The course was good but there was a long-ish climb in the early miles and a big f#&*er of a hill in mile 9. It was lightly raining for my whole race but let up right after and the sun came out to cook the full marathon runners a little. I think you should expect rain at this event. It rains a lot here.

I really felt strong the whole time and the miles kind of flew by. I got pretty tired by like mile 9 and just gutted it out. Here are my splits, I actually had some good speed going I just didn't hold it up in the end.

1 8:09
2 7:40
3 7:49
4 8:00
5 8:14
6 7:52
7 7:51
8 8:04
9 8:21 (hill)
10 8:12
11 8:23
12 8:08
13 8:15
0.1 :50

1:45:51
(8:05 ave)

Zach had an INCREDIBLE race. He is such a smart and fast runner. Hopefully he'll post his splits too, but I can tell you he PR'd big time with 1:34:14. :O Merlin's beard! (that's my new saying)

So I have a tri training schedule ready to begin in one week. I'm going to use this coming week to let my legs recover from the race, get my schedules finalized and printed out and stuff, outline my diet a little and figure out how I'm going to survive without Cupcake Jones, etc etc. Get my shit in gear. It's transition time! (get it, that's a triathlon joke)

Thanks for reading!! Congratulations to Aron on an amazing marathon finish today too. It was great to see her and her family. Wish we could have hung out longer! Alisa and Amy also drove down to cheer everyone on which was awesome. Alisa's sign said "Toenails are for sissies" Love it. Thanks guys! :)