A1A Race Report

SOOOO tired right now but I will share some details from today!

The short version: I PR’d!! My PR was from 2007, 1:46:55 at the OBX Half Marathon.

Today my official time was 1:46:15, so yay! However, here are some details in bullet point form!

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Pre-Race/Carb Load: I did successfully carb load as planned for this race! I never track calories or carbs normally but yesterday I did (had to estimate one thing – pizza – but everything else was pretty much labeled) and took in 385g total. The main components were bagels, sports drinks/a protein shake, a LOT of pretzels, thin mints, and pizza 🙂

I honestly felt slightly ill going to bed but woke up feeling okay. I had 2 sheets of grahams with my coffee, drank some water and LMNT, and bathroom stuff was fine – both at home and once I got to the race (TMI sorry but . . . I mean, important!)

Getting There: I was lucky enough to get a ride with a friend, so that was so nice (she also picked up my packet!). We left at 4 (which means I got up at 3) and arrived around 4:35. The garage was ~0.75 mi from the start so we walked, got in the bathroom line, and then did a 0.5 mi shakeout. That brought us to ~5:30, and people were lining up for a 5:50 start. They were slightly delayed but we were off and running by 6:00.

We were off! It was humid (like 93%, dew point 67) and 69-70F. It didn’t feel terrible — last year was much worse weather-wise because it was mid-70s and bright sunshine — all that radiant heat was not appreciated in the back half of the race! There was a bit of a headwind for the first part which meant a tailwind in the last several miles which was much appreciated.

I took a gel right at the start and my first mile was ~7:52 despite doing some weaving. It felt pretty smooth and easy. I just told myself “okay, just keep up this effort for ~10 miles then you can pick it up a little.”

I took my 2nd gel at mile 3.5. I started to notice that there was a significant discrepancy between my watch and the mile markers by 3 or 4 — like minutes-worth, which seemed very weird. However, I tried to ignore it and run by feel and my watch.

I felt good until mile 6 or 7, when we were running into headwinds and I knew we weren’t going to turn around until mile 8. I gulped a couple sips of water from cups every 3 mi or so. I took gel #3 at mile 7. (All 3 gels fit in my shorts/FlipBelt which was nice; I never had to stop to grab one and I opened them with my teeth!).

Mile 8!! We turned around and I did feel a bit better not running into the wind. I was however starting to feel kind of hot and kind of like . . . wishing it was over. I knew I *could* handle 5 more miles at a similar effort but I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Not going to lie, I also continued to be annoyed about the mile markers, realizing that when my watch said “13” I wasn’t going to be that close to the end.

I took gel #4 at mile 10 and these were the toughest miles. I thought I was picking it up starting at mile 12 but I’m not sure my efforts did all that much. I finally saw the clock and noticed it said 1:46:xx so I did speed up knowing I wanted a PR.

FINISHED! My splits:

OFFICIAL TIME:

STRAVA:

Yep, a bit of a pace/length discrepancy! I know it’s ABSOLUTELY annoying to say this but . . . I think the course was long for a half. I took a deep dive into the strava data from A1A last year (since I ran it, I can see not only my own watch’s recording, but also that of other runners in the race) and 2023’s A1A was ~13.15 on most people’s watches including mine; this year I saw anything from ~13.39-13.5; it didn’t matter whether that data was coming from Garmin or Apple Watch or whatever. Apparently they did slightly change the course and a friend of a friend who was a very pacer said (and I quote from the screenshot she sent me): “Oh my god, it was so long! Half was 0.4 long.”

It was a PR either way, and I think in reality I really did run the race I wanted to run, even if not officially! I will never know, but that’s okay. My official time of course remains 1:46:15 as shown above.

Now onto marathon training (well, after taking some easier days to recover!!!!).