Lander Half Marathon (13.1 Miles)
Lander, WY
After a hard week of training and some tapering right before the race, I fared really well in this year’s half marathon
. I have horrific memories of running this race for the 1st time last summer not knowing what I was getting myself into and bonking out at mile 10. This year I went into it well prepared and with somewhat of a strategy.
For the first 6 miles I hung with the pack of 4 front-runners who took us out at a pretty good clip. It was Joe from the ski team, a couple of Lander women (who apparently had qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon last spring), and some other dude I didn’t know. The 1st half of the course was mostly uphill with more of a rolling hill succession. I thought it was kind of funny because I w
ould eat away at them on the strong uphills and then let them pass me on the downs until we finally hit the 2nd to last climb around mile 6 where I opened up a spread between us.
So there I was, taking off with the race not even half-way through the course. Once I hit the downhill stretch, I was hauling ass! I couldn’t help but opening up even more with Adam, Kelly, & Ashley cheering me on as they gave me “feeds” along the course. What can I say, I felt great and I went for it! Towards the end of the race, as I looked back I had put at least a ¾ mile spread between me
and the 2nd place finisher. My legs were numb but damn it felt great!
I finished out with a time of 85:37 which handed me the race title though I know I could have finished a few seconds faster. GI problems at about mile 8 necessitated a 5 second pit-stop on the side of the road…if you know what I mean! All of my roommates where there and Tess even finished her 1st half marathon! Quite the step up from the TJC 5k! In all, I had a great race and can’t wait to start training for the next one!
After a hard week of training and some tapering right before the race, I fared really well in this year’s half marathon
. I have horrific memories of running this race for the 1st time last summer not knowing what I was getting myself into and bonking out at mile 10. This year I went into it well prepared and with somewhat of a strategy.For the first 6 miles I hung with the pack of 4 front-runners who took us out at a pretty good clip. It was Joe from the ski team, a couple of Lander women (who apparently had qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon last spring), and some other dude I didn’t know. The 1st half of the course was mostly uphill with more of a rolling hill succession. I thought it was kind of funny because I w
ould eat away at them on the strong uphills and then let them pass me on the downs until we finally hit the 2nd to last climb around mile 6 where I opened up a spread between us. So there I was, taking off with the race not even half-way through the course. Once I hit the downhill stretch, I was hauling ass! I couldn’t help but opening up even more with Adam, Kelly, & Ashley cheering me on as they gave me “feeds” along the course. What can I say, I felt great and I went for it! Towards the end of the race, as I looked back I had put at least a ¾ mile spread between me
and the 2nd place finisher. My legs were numb but damn it felt great!I finished out with a time of 85:37 which handed me the race title though I know I could have finished a few seconds faster. GI problems at about mile 8 necessitated a 5 second pit-stop on the side of the road…if you know what I mean! All of my roommates where there and Tess even finished her 1st half marathon! Quite the step up from the TJC 5k! In all, I had a great race and can’t wait to start training for the next one!
posted by Chris Sanders at 15:24
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