13.1 plus 3.9 equals 17

What do you do when you have a half-marathon and a 17 mile training run scheduled for the same day? Both!

It was a beautiful day for the Parks Half Marathon, a scenic race almost completely on paved trails through parkland from Rockville to Bethesda, Md.

Since this was part of a longer training run and also my first half-marathon, I wasn't sure if I should push myself or take it easy -- in the end I ended up doing both.

I was running with my buddy, Alan (on the left) who didn't train for this whatsoever, but still managed to cross the finish line in 2:21!

Since we were late to get going for the 7 a.m. start, we were literally the last people to cross the start line before they picked up the starting mats and we started winding our way through a crowded field.

After about two miles we entered the park trails where we would remain for the rest of the race and things started to thin out a bit and we were going about a 10:00 a mile clip.

We held that until mile 9.5, where we stopped to have a gel and agreed to meet at the finish line.

My official time was 2:09:52.


Since this was part of a 17 mile training run for NYC, I ran another 3.9 miles home where my protein bar and ice bath awaited me.

All in all a somewhat crowded, but fun race, though they could have used more fluid stations in my opinion.

Total time was 2:49:29.



Here are my splits, according to Garmin:

1 00:09:32
2 00:09:29
3 00:09:59
4 00:10:07
5 00:09:53
                      6 00:11:29 (stretch break)
7 00:10:01
8 00:10:05
9 00:09:26
                10 00:10:54 (piss stop)
11 00:08:59
12 00:08:58
13 00:10:15
14 00:09:37
15 00:09:38
16 00:10:17
17 00:11:39