Pittsburgh Half Marathon

Race: Pittsburgh Half-Marathon
Date: May 5, 2013
Location: Pittsburgh, Pa.
Time: 2:02:17
Overall Rank: 4,658 out of 14,039
Age Group Rank: 2,642 out of 5,450
Results: http:

Super-great experience shared with 25,000 other runners and upwards of 100,000 spectators. We started off at a pace a little slower than I would choose due to the crowd of people around us, but it was comfortable and I was having great fun joking with others, cheering on the spectators and bands, slapping hands of perfect strangers, and weaving around the course like a sure-footed and confident ungulate. I was jubilant. My running partner Dan would probably have punched my face in as I tooted like a train while running through highway underpasses. But I do that all the time, so he's used to it.


Crossing the Allegheny River into downtown Pittsburgh around mile 4.

I stayed pain free and felt perfect through mile 6. With each additional mile, it started getting tougher to act like a sure-footed ungulate. My quads started to hurt. The reality of only getting 6 hours of sleep the night before started to creep into my subconscious and moderate my mood. I still joked around but was more quiet. Our pace decreased a bit as the cheering crowds on the sidelines thinned out on the Southside. One highlight was seeing Danise and Joanne, and Dan's family cheering for use at the bease of the Duquesne Incline. Joanne had even made signs, one of which said "Go, Jim, go!" I am grateful for our cheering squad!

Having passed our family and friends cheering on the sideline at mile 9, I said to Dan "now I don't have anything to look forward to." In retrospect this wasn't an accurate thing to say, but my point was that I was sorry we had passed our friends and no one would be cheering specifically for us at the finish line. And while the finishline was less than 3 miles away, I was starting to feel more like a plodding rhinosaurus rather than a nimble gazelle. Not only was I exceeding the distance for which I had trained for, the race course featured a long, steady uphill segment from mile 10.5 to mile 12.0.

My quads hurt with each stride, and my knee was aching a little, and the soles of my feet were feeling raw. I encouraged Dan to run ahead and not let me hold him back. He decided to take me up on the offer at mile 11.5. As I watched him go, I was at first content to maintain my slowing pace but from mile 12.0 to the end I thought "if Dan can do it, so can I." I increased the length of my stride and pushed harder. My heart rate climbed from the low 160s into the mid 170s. According to my HR monitor my maximum HR was 195 but that seems unrealistic. I haven't gotten it above 185 in more than a year.

Nearing the finish line in downtown Pittsburgh

Anyway, I made it! The last mile was easy because I was ignoring pain, the cheering crowds had returned, and I knew I was just about done. One fun thing was that full-length marathon course re-joined the half-marathon course at the end (but in separately designated traffic lanes), and as I was nearing the finishline, the actual winner of the marathon was coming through, sparking a huge cheer from the crowd. That man had completed a full marathon in nearly the same amount of time it took me to run half the distance!

Here are my official stats:
Overall Time: 2:02:17 (my split time at the 10K mark was 0:57:50; I maintained a nearly equal pace of 9:20 min per mile throughout the race.)

This runner is happy the race is over, but he'd do it again!