Austin Livestrong Half Marathon...a PR worth the wait.

Today was a perfect day for a mini-smashfest. The Austin Livestrong marathon and half-marathon takes places in downtown Austin and is known for it's difficult course. Why I decided to race this half-marathon as opposed to the 3M half-marathon which is a net downhill course? Well two reasons. 1.) The 3M half-marathon was on my birthday and I decided to have a birthday smashfest instead (see previous post for details!) 2.) I wanted the challenge of racing on a more difficult course. Hilly courses play to my strengths as a runner so coach Hillary and I set this date on the race calendar as the first race of the 2012 season. It was a great way to test my run fitness going into my first few triathlons of the season. And the verdict? We are right on track with my training.

 

This was my first race as an athlete on PowerBar's Team Elite. Here I am pre-race fueling up with my favorite PowerBar products! Even George approves of the taste and quality of the PowerBar nutrition products.








The week leading up to the race was a regular training week up until Friday where coach had me mostly swimming and biking and off of the legs in order to store up some extra energy to attack the race today. The course starts at the Capitol and heads up Congress Avenue (miles 2-5) creating the net uphill portion of the race. We then turned down multi-cultural 1st Street (miles 6-8) which formed the net downhill portion of the course. After turning onto Cesar Chavez street, which runs along Town Lake, we encountered the rolling hills of downtown Austin. Two nasty hills greeted us at miles 11.8 and 12.5. I'm pretty sure I was making dead animal noises climbing those hills and during the last couple of miles of the race.


From the starting gun I decided to never let my "foot off the gas." I was running "uncomfotable" the whole 13.1 miles, which is how I knew I was on PR pace. I crossed the finish line with nothing left in the tank, the way it should be!

Focusing on maintaining a steady pace my splits ended up fairly nice and even....

6:43
6:38
6:45
6:58
6:48
6:44
6:34
6:44
6:50
7:01
6:58
6:49
6:31
The last 0.22 miles at 5:53 pace

Average pace: 6:46

I ended up 8th in a competitive age group (25-29) and 15th female overall with an official time of 1:29:23.

George looks about as mellow as I feel now that my post-race swim is done, homemade whole wheat crust pizza has been consumed and I've fallen slave to the couch. And check out the legit race shirts. Only a race sponsored by Lance Armstrong would provide technical shirts of this caliber!

Good friends who also had some great races today!

Thank you again to coach Hillary for giving me the tools I needed to attack this race and the confidence to go for it! Thank you to my sponsor, PowerBar, for giving me the nutritional "Power to Push." And most importantly, thank you to Jason, the love of my life, for being here for me every step of the way!