Charleston Half-Marathon Race Report

I don’t believe I wrote a race report for the Charleston Half-Marathon last year, but it was two weeks prior to my breakthrough marathon in Miami and had given me a great deal of confidence. I had “accidentally” set a half-marathon PR by 7 seconds in a time of 1:22:33 after a closing 5k of 18:55.

Going into this year’s race I had a similar goal of just running a steady tempo around what I hope to run in Boston 13 weeks from now. The night before the race I pulled up last year’s splits and thought how I might be able to squeak out another PR by a few seconds if I just aimed to run every mile somewhere around 6:15.

For the second year in a row, starting with the goal of running relaxed and steady produced my best half-marathon effort, but this time it wasn’t even close. At the start I took off and quickly found that I was a couple of yards in front… woops! I glanced at my watch and realized I was running 5:20 pace for the first quarter mile, so I focused on relaxing my shoulders, and slowly let everyone get back to me. I had planned on a first mile around 6:10 knowing there was little chance I would go slower than that, but my 5:53 opener wouldn’t even hold up as my fastest mile of the day!

After we made the turn at the Battery at the southern-most point of the course a group of 11 runners were beginning to separate themselves from me. I wasn’t worried, however, because my focus was still on running an easy 1:22, and they were cruising along at 5:50 pace. My second mile was a steady 6:03 and allowed a small group of 3 to join up with me. From there it was a long 8 mile stretch almost entirely into a strong headwind. Without saying a word we began taking turns in the front and allowed the others to draft behind us. After a 6:04 third mile that seemed to go by in the blink of an eye we ratcheted up the pace to 5:59 for the 4^th and dropped the weakest member of our clan.

This left us with three, two of us were 6’2”, while the third was probably about 5’8” and was running the full marathon instead of the half. Again, without speaking, it became clear we weren’t going to make him take the wind for us. For the 5^th mile we threw down what would be my fastest of the race at 5:52 (29:52 after 5), and kept on the sub-6 pace with another 5:59 6^th mile. That brought me through 10k in the second fastest time I’ve ever run, only behind my 36:02 PR from last March.

By mile 8 our little group began to separate and the marathoner took off ahead (to later take a pit-stop and rejoin us briefly). We had passed 2 of the front group by this point and I hit 10 miles in a stellar 1:00:12. If I ran anything close to the last 5k I had the year before I’d be well under 1:20! Unfortunately that had been after 10 weeks of marathon prep and off an easier pace, not just TWO weeks of training off a 6:01 pace through 10 miles!

I struggled a little bit over the last 3 miles but kept it together to close with 6:19, 6:20, and 6:12 before the extra part that I covered in 1:06. In theory that extra part should be .1 but my Garmin had it at .2 miles (.16 last year).

Nevertheless, I crossed the line in an official time of 1:20:07 for a HUGE PR! Overall I ended up 11^th in the half-marathon and 2^nd in the 20-24 age group. There were 2033 participants in the half, making it my highest percentile placing ever.