So I did my second half marathon. This was tougher than the first because it is some hilly country around the New River. Since January, I've trained a lot of miles and found my overall speed to have improved. So I had expected to improve my time for the event. I saw the profiles for the steep hills in the route description but it's hard to judge from a diagram. Within the first 2 miles we turned across the river and up onto a ridge. The road continued up, and up, and up. Finally dropping down to follow the river again. We found another small hill to climb about half way and then faced the final hill at about 8 to 9 miles. That one wasn't as tall as the first, but by then you could feel the incline. There were lots of folks who simply dropped down to a walk on the hill, and that might have been a smart strategy. I ran the hill as best I could, and then sped down the gravel road to the little town of Todd. At that point I knew I had only 4 miles to go at best. My plan was to save myself until the rest stop, then increase the pace little bit by little bit until I crossed the finish. But the hills took something out of me so just maintaining along the long straight was difficult. I put off my increase in pace later and later. Finally I passed a young lady who had slowed to a walk and encouraged her to start back running. We ran together to the finish. I didn't try to push the pace and wound up with a time 3 minutes over my last time. I am a little torn about whether it was worth driving up to Boone for this event. I did learn a little bit I can use for our event though.
