Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cox Providence 1/2 Marathon

Just a quick post tonight to recap our Cox Rhode Races 1/2 Marathon in Providence, RI this past Sunday. Miss Bethany and I decided it'd be fun to just run a fun, easy half marathon together. We hadn't run a race together in a while, and we figured we were planning to do a long run anyway, might as well run a great race and have fun with it.

This was our third time doing this race, and it has definitely gotten better ever year. The expo has been getting better every year, the shirts are cool, the course is fun, the spectators and volunteers are great, and the free beer at the end is awesome. (And I always love going back to Providence, the city of my alma mater, Brown University.) 

We started out nice and slow, around 9:30 pace. We gradually picked it up to about an overall average pace of 9:18 min/mile, and settle in at that for a few miles while my calf warmed up nicely. As we saw the miles tick away, we began to look at our watches and saw that if we reallllly pushed it the last few miles we might be able to squeeze in under 2 hours. Not wanting to test the calf, I was tentative to really pick it up, but we kept gradually increasing our pace until we were flying at the end. I thought we were gonna make it, but we ended up in 2:00:02. We just ran out of distance. Oh well, it was fun. I love negative splitting, and I love the races where you end up chasing a time, speeding up to try to hit it. (As opposed to races where you go out too fast and end up slowly seeing your average pace increase and your goal time slip away. I'd always rather be chasing my goal time rather than trying to hold onto it for dear life as I slow down. Those are the worst. Know what I mean?)

Anyway, it was a really fun race. After the race, we went and grabbed some chocolate milk and I had a free beer. Nothing like a good mix of chocolate milk and beer. Yum! After the milk/beer combo, we headed back out on the course to meet a friend and run another 4 miles. 

Here are some pics from the day:
 Pre-race.

Post-race.

Post-race at Bethany's house.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

now that i can put an actual picture to what you guys were wearing i TOTALLY SAW YOU TWO! arrrrrrrrrgh for not being able to meet up.

i love negative splitting too so YAY :)

Unknown said...

Fun, sunny day! Hey, only weeks away!!! I bet you're excited!!

Richelle said...

Sounds like a fun race. Yay for negative splitting!

Lauren said...

Sounds like you had a nice run. :)
Oh, and you guys are just too cute together!

Suzy said...

I love that you raced together! Someday my husband will get slow (maybe) or I'll get faster (doubtful) and we could do the same. I'm not holding my breath for it to happen so I'll live vicariously through your races together. Tks for sharing.

Amanda said...

Sounds like you had a fun race. I love that you guys run a half marathon and then go run another four miles - awesome!

Great job on the negative split.

Karen Seal said...

Great job on the race! :0)

Johann said...

Great run, that's still a very good time! Super that you run together so often.