Inside Out Half Marathon Race Report:
March 30, 2008
Cary, North Carolina
Weather conditions: 42 degrees, cloudy, 16 mph wind, and 38 degrees with wind-chill
The race started in front of the Inside Out store location in Cary, North Carolina. Inside Out is probably the most well-known triathlon store in the country. They are the official bike support at all of the continental Ironman races. I consider myself very fortunate that I live 3 miles down the road from the store.
If I was to take a guess the race was about 250 participants strong. The race started right on time. The first .5-mile was up a long hill that gave everyone a quick warm-up and a taste of what was about to come in the next 12.5 miles.
The first 3 miles only had two uphill stretched followed by what I remember to be 4 really long downhills. At this point everyone was warmed up and checking their watches (most seemed really impressed by their splits up to this point).
At mile 5 the course took us into Umstead Park. Umstead is a valuable area for anyone who likes to run, ride mountain or cyclocross bikes without traffic on a very forgiving lime rock trail. Once again the first half-mile into the park is a gradual but taxing uphill. I frequently run out here and knew that this slight and very deceiving grade can put a major hurting on someone’s heart rate. I took this opportunity to take in my first GU gel (personally GU is the one and only gel that I ingest: the consistency, Plain flavor, and most importantly the lack of GI stress makes this the perfect fuel during training and racing for me) and several gulps of CytoMax. The temperature was just about perfect for this run. Fluids and electrolytes were being lost but not nearly at the rate when the temperatures in Raleigh were in the 80’s just two days ago.
Miles 5-7 were on the lime rock trail in Umstead, no steep grades up or down, just peace and quiet in the woods. The turn around point gives everyone the opportunity to see the progression of the race. Some of the participants looked strong, while others looked like they wanted to take a bus back to the start. Either way, anyone out here on a Sunday morning deserves a lot of respect for getting out of bed early and starting a race in such cold conditions.
Mile 8 doesn’t even register in my mind. It was the last mile in the park, with a slight downhill grade. There is a corner on the way of that we call the Nitrous corner, once we turn it during training runs/rides – it’s a full out sprint out of the park. I decided to take in one more GU gel, I felt fine but didn’t want to run out of gas towards the end of the run.
Mile 10- 13.1 is when this course starts to make even feel the pain. The last 3 miles of this course are up hill the entire time. It is the payback time from the first 3 miles that everyone was so proud of their splits going down hill. What goes up must come down! Mile 10 and 12 had two hills that were a minimum .5-mile or more. At the top the topography didn’t flatten out, it just wasn’t as steep. The final hill at 12.5 put a major hurting on myself. My right hamstring wouldn’t loosen up, it wasn’t cramping, it just wouldn’t release and stretch out all the way. Yet again though, at the top of this hill, the course took a right hand turn and still had a slight but steady uphill gradient all the way to the finish line.
Race statistics per Garmin GPS:
Distance: 13.1 miles
Total time: 1:46:49
Average pace: 8:14/mile
Average speed: 7.3 mph
Max speed: 18.2 mph
Total Calories: 1556
Average Heart Rate: 169
Max Heart Rate: 177
Total Ascent: 2171
Total Descent: 2101

Train Hard, Race Harder


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