8 November Wine and Dine Half Marathon aka Tutu Time

Well, it was a fun race last night at my first Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon, but it didn't go quite as expected.  Ended up with slower time than hoped for and can't can't blame the corral start location.  When registering for the race you can submit a verifiable half marathon time which would have put me in corral B.  I did that, but the mistake was accidentally typing 2:45 as the expected finish time instead of 1:45.  That landed me back in Corral "I", or as the t-shirt in the expo that my friends sent me a picture of...

They actually have t-shirts about corral location?  Yep!

The race started at 10PM and my buddy and I drove up in the morning, walked around the expo for a while, then went to Downtown Disney and met some of our other WeBe Running friends for lunch who got there Friday afternoon.  We then went to the hotel, checked in and grabbed a quick nap, because it was going to be a long night!

We arrived at the race site about 7:30 and did the bag check, saw some other friends there and eventually made our way into the corrals.  It turns out that there were about 14,000 runners signed up for the half marathon.  The weather was perfect at first, in the 60s with no rain and even when the rain started it wasn't a bad night to run.  It was pretty neat when each of the starting corrals began, they shot off fireworks, so people who started farther back got to see the fireworks several times and they were playing musing and pumping up the crowd.

Each corral got fireworks when they started.

It rained for the duration of the race at a pretty steady clip, but never really a downpour so it wasn't too bad.  My goal was to keep the pace as close to 8 minute miles as possible and speed up the second half of the race but that didn't happen.  It was very crowded at first and I was running in the grass and on the edge of the street passing a bunch of people.  The goal was not to get passed because I was starting so far back, and it was working but some dude passed me at about mile 2 and there was no way I could keep up with him, but I actually caught and passed him around mile 8  :)  Even though I was passing people it was a struggle to go fast at all, I just had no energy or kick.  The splits were in the 9:00 range and my legs couldn't go much faster.  It usually takes a bit to get warmed up, but the only sub 8 minute miles were miles 10 and 11 and they were just barely under 8 minutes.

The poncho was a lifesaver waiting for the start of the race!

The course left Disney's Wide World of Sports, then went through Animal Kingom and MGM Studios.  There were tons of volunteers encouraging people in the rain and handing out powerade and water.  There were Disney characters along the course that you could stop and take pictures with if you chose to do so.  At the end of the course at Epcot there were loads of cheering people and when you crossed the finish line they gave you a really cool medal.

After the race was over, the temperature dropped a bit more and the rain continued so it did put a little bit of a damper on the after party at Epcot, especially for people who traveled from out of state for the event.  We did enjoy some of the food and rode Mission Space, the boat ride in the Mexico section, and Soarin, so it was a good time although damp and chilly!

As far as the race goes there were 2 big mistakes leading up to it and they were both tactical and both in the last week of training.  They were both completely stupid and unnecessary, but you live and learn.  They won't happen again and I'm sure I'll make other mistakes to learn more lessons from!

Mistake 1: I didn't follow my plan.  I found a plan online that seemed to work with my pace, schedule, goals, and cross training efforts.  The plan called for the last long run to be Saturday before the half marathon, which I did.  It was a solid run averaging below an 8 minute mile pace for 11 miles, but was a little bit tired at the end.  That would have been fine had that been the last long run.

For some unknown and stupid reason I decided to run 9 more miles Monday and push it the last couple of miles, then do a some 400 meter repeats on Wednesday.  The only thing the plan called for was a short 30 minute tempo run on Tuesday.
 
I was out of completely out of gas on Monday after that run.  The repeats for this training round have been at a 6:18 pace on a treadmill, maintaining good form and have been doing up to 10 with no issues.  On Wednesday I was struggling to maintain good running form just with 4 repeats so stopped.  It was at that point I felt I had made a mistake and would pay the price on Saturday.

Lesson learned: Follow your plan.  If you are using the Jack Daniels Plan, or Hal Higdon, or Galloway, or whatever, don't deviate at the very end.  If you are paying a coach to train you, and you deviate from your coaches plan, you are probably wasting your money and your coaches time.  Don't do that!

Mistake 2: Don't walk around all day if you are doing a night run.  Sometimes you can't help it with the schedule, but between parking far away from the running expo and Downtown Disney and walking around to and from hotels it was just too much.

Lesson learned:  If possible I will get there the day before, or just chill out and skip the 3-5 miles of walking took place prior to the race.  The walking around likely burned off some of the energy that should have been used for the race.

Final outcome: The time was 1:51 and the goal time was between 1:35 and 1:45.  The fun part was that if I hit my fast goal time, my buddy had to wear a tutu in an upcoming race, and if I didn't get less than 1:45, I would be the one stuck in the tutu.  As a result, I'll be pacing the Coral Springs half marathon in a tutu... should be fun, for everyone else that is ;)

Which one do you like?

Next year I will be back hoping for not only a faster time, but better weather and a non cold and wet after party.  On a positive note, since Sunday is my diet cheat day we were able to have a nice breakfast on the way home....

There aren't enough of these in my area!

Next weekend I'll be pacing a friend for the second half of her first 100 at Wild Sebastian and up next for me is 50 at the Skydive Ultramarathon at the end of January.  Hope to see you at one of those events and now it's time to bump up the mileage a little bit!  Until next time...