Race report 2021 Wine and Dine 1/2 marathon
The quick read is in the W&D thread
https://www.disboards.com/posts/63517571/It was a great race and the return of in person runDisney so
here is the long read version...
Preparation:
Leading up to this was a challenge, I had an `A` marathon only 5 weeks prior simply because when things were closed I signed up for whatever was available. Before I knew it my calendar was very busy. In the 5 weeks between the 2 races I had to fit in the virtual Boston, recovery, training, and taper. I took 5 days off, ran an easy 5 miles, walk/ran a very conservative virtual, took 3 days off and went back to my usual 5 miles/day. Two weeks prior was a 15 mile long run and then taper time. That was much needed as I was feeling right on the edge of a quad/flexor problem that was clearly from overuse.
The plan was to run an easy 10K Saturday followed by a full on max effort 1/2. Training wise I do almost all my runs as continous as it seems to help my endurance but when it comes to time my best half was 8'35"/mile running but 8'20" with run/walk.
With a primary goal of 8/mile and a shoot for the moon goal of BQ pace (7'40")I plugged in some numbers and decided on a 3:00/:30 run/walk with aggressive pacing right out of the start.
The course:
First off, huge thanks to the volunteers, in typical runDisney fashion, they were amazing and nothing would happen without them. Water stops were spaced near perfectly and each had plenty of people spread out to avoid any near collisions with runners trying to grab some hydration.
The weather was near perfect, especially for Florida. About 50 and dry, there was a good breeze on occasion but not the wind in your face, slow you down kind of weather.
I was initially worried about the course through AK as I was trying for a PR and I knew Pandora to be narrow, winding, and slippery if there was any moisture but that turned out to not be an issue, and it seems like this course had more park time than any in the past. It was my favorite to date, I don't remember any long, boring stretches even between parks.
The race:
I ran my conservative 10K the day before and did overdo the parks a little but after a good dinner, hot tub, stretching, and a good 6-1/2 hour sleep (love that clock change sometimes), I was ready.
Got to the s1 corral with the first people to insure a fairly decent start that would quickly spread out.
Stuck to my plan and went out fast, funny enough as a Stitch fanatic I decided to see if I could hit a run pace of 6'26". Got it, at some points saw high 5s and decided to slow up - fast is good, too fast, not so much. My paces are a little fast as my watch tracked the race as 13.5 miles but my first 3 miles came in at 7'07", 7'07", and 7'00"
Crazy fast for me, smashing my 5K PR at the first timing point.
The next 5K was a little slower with 7'10", 7'32", and 7'13" crushing my previous 10K PR as well!
Miles 7-10 I was starting to feel just how hard I was pushing but not enough to stop - 7'16", 7'18", 7'39", 7'38"
This is where I could feel the tired quad start to say "hey dummy, I don't like to work this hard" but that's ok, my wife was at mile 10.8 to cheer me on and with a quick pump of biofreeze at the mile 11 tent as well as the adrenalin of the boardwalk and EPCOT I kept at it cosintently - miles 11-14(13.5?) were 7'46", 7'28", 7'25", 7'32"
The end result - PR by 10 minutes!
Even better, after looking up my official result, 1:39:27 (7'36") I found that not only did I crush my goals, I got 3rd/389 in my age group. Never even dreamt of that!
My conclusion:
1 - I can qualify for Boston
2 - training slow to race fast works as long as it's consistent miles
3 - my Dopey plans have changed, after hitting a PR at every distance in the last 5 weeks I'm going to enjoy the races and the experience with no pressure on myself to get a time.
4 - I may need to consult the great
@DopeyBadger to help plan. I tend to plug in distances and days that make sense to me and definitely work for me, but I would like to move toward running at slower paces with less walks. My previous PR was 1:49:23 with a 2:30/30 and this was 3:00/30. I tried to go with the Galloway pacers at Princess 2020 (4:00/30) and couldn't keep up. Of course that was a while ago.
Anyways, thanks for reading. I didn't intend to post a novel but I'm super excited for what was a great return to running Disney.