2008 Mizuno Columbus 15 Miler

It's Tuesday and I had better write about this now, or run the risk of putting it off to the point that I don't at all. Things have been so busy at work and at home that I'm still missing a training report from last week's speed workout as well. I'm going to try to tie that one in with this week's a little later.

The race was Sunday morning, before the remnants of Ike decided to "blow" through the Great State of Ohio. I drove down from Medina that morning instead of staying in Columbus overnight because we had to make some last minute changes to the weekend due to the poor health of our dog Penny. The temperature when I began driving at 5:00 AM was 76 degrees. It only dropped a couple degrees by the time I got to Alum Creek State Park. Did I mention that it was also about 75% humidity? It was. It was wet. Our one saving grace that day was a stiff breeze. A breeze out of the south bringing with it the sweet smell of hops and barley from the Anheiser-Busch brewery miles away.

After an easy warm-up of about a mile, I decided that I felt good enough to try to run this race at my half-marathon pace rather than just maintaining my slower, more comfortable marathon pace. That meant I was going to hurt a little. But I didn't hurt that much. All the hard repetitions on the track had me pushing, but without the effort I was expecting. Even the heat didn't get to me the way it was getting to others. I was hot and sweating a ton, but I was aware of it and took extra care at the water stops to replace as much fluids as I could. I only suffered from some minor cramping in the last 2 to 3 miles. But I was able to work through it and finished strong. My finish time was 1:58:22. I finished first in my age group. I passed a kid (or so I thought) with about 150 yards to go, who ended up placing second in our age group. Glad I put the hammer down going into the finish line. I would have hated to have been caught by him after all the effort during the 14.95 miles before that!

For anyone interested, here are my mile splits:
Mile 1 - 7:12
Mile 2 - 7:41
Mile 3 - 7:39
Mile 4 - 7:44
Mile 5 - 7:37
Mile 6 - 7:43
Mile 7 - 7:57
Mile 8 - 8:02 (began walking through the water stops)
Mile 9 - 7:52
Mile 10 - 8:26
Mile 11 - 8:12
Mile 12 - 7:51
Mile 13 - 8:20
Mile 14 - 8:18
Mile 15 - 7:41

Overall, not a bad course. We started at the beach area, wound around the parking lot, and headed out the south end towards the dam. There is a great gravel path back there that winds up and down and around through a dense stand of trees. I never new that was back there. Some of the other races that are held at Alum Creek should take advantage of that trail and incorporate it into their courses. The run over the dam and levee was the windiest section, but that felt magnificent. Running on the road was just alright. The roads were still open to traffic, but there wasn't too much that early on a Sunday. My biggest gripe was the non-removal of road kill from the course. Those things STANK! Especially the deer with missing hind quarter. YOU try running past something like that, breathing very hard, and not gagging, and see if you enjoy it. Otherwise a well run event, though on the small side, that I might consider doing again in the future.

Take care and look for a track training update sometime.

Mr. P