Eating Dust In The Green Mountain State

The Covered Bridges Half-Marathon is one of the most popular of all races in the country. When registration opens in December, the race is full in a couple of hours (overheard during the race today). It’s reputed to have some of the most beautiful race course in the Northeast and the fact that the course drops 230 feet from start to finish has many runners dreaming of record times. However, it’s not as easy a course as you might think.

During the first 8 miles, the drop in elevation is only about 40 feet and there are several rolling hills to slow your progress down. Iif that isn’t enough, there is a hill between mile 8 and 9 of about 10% grade that lasts for a mere one-tenth of a mile, just enough to leave many gasping for breath at its crest. Last year, bent on making a 2 hour timeframe, I sprinted this hill and ran pretty quickly miles 9 to 12 on track to make my goal, but then hit the biggest wall I’d ever experienced when the course flattened out for the remainder of the race. My legs felt like they were cast in concrete and nothing I could tell myself would loosen their hold.

This year, I went in with that in mind and prepared myself for “the hill“. I also decided at the starting line that, rather than try to jump from the 10:10 pace I’d finished with the previous weekend to a 9:00 minute pace , I would aim for a 9:20 pace, a significant improvement week to week. It started well enough, as usual, with my slowest pace for the first 7 miles at 9:38 and my fastest at 9:02. But the hill started to weigh heavy on my mind as I approached it and I slowed to a 10:33 pace. I took the hill at a much slower pace than last year and got to mile 9 in decent shape. But I made a crucial error there that cost me my goal.

I know the pace of each mile because my Garmin watch tells me the pace at any point in time, as well as the pace for a lap once I hit the lap button. I use the instantaneous pace to give me an idea of how fast I’m running (e.g. if I’m at 9:45 and my goal is 9:20, I know I need to speed up; if I’m running at an 8:00 pace, I know I’ll pay for it later). I also memorize before the race what my total time should be at each mile so I have a general idea of how far ahead or behind I am.

There is also a “Start/Stop” button next to the lap button that stops adding to the cumulative time and distance. At mile 9, I pressed this button instead of the “Lap” button, and ran this way for some distance unknowingly. By the time I figured this out, my feedback mechanism was shot. On miles 9 through 11, when I was running through the steepest drop, I ran an average pace of over 10:00, where I should have been running something closer to 9:00. And this would gotten me close enough to my goal of 2:03 with which I would have been satisfied.

But alas, my net time was 2:07, six minutes faster than last week’s 2:13 time, so there is some satisfaction to be had. For the next two months, I’ll redouble my training efforts, concentrate on those late race running times and set my sights on the New York City Half in August. After all, if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.