Race Report: Houston Half-Marathon, January 14, 2018

I ran the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon yesterday, finishing in a time of 1:25:43 - good enough for an age group win as well as a significant half-marathon PR.  So it was a good day.

I have a past history with the Houston Half.  Back in 2012 I had planned on Houston for a PR attempt only to get injured and miss it.  I always meant to give it a second try, but other racing plans and/or injuries always got in the way.  

Finally, this past spring I had some good races at the half-marathon and 10 mile distances.  I checked the website for Houston on a whim, and realized that my times were probably good enough to get me into their Athlete Development Program ("ADP"), especially after adding in the age factor.  (I've learned that if a race has an elite or sub-elite standard, and you're close but not under, they'll sometimes give you a bit of leeway if you're over 40).  

So I applied, and they kindly let me in.   Yay.  I knew that I'd likely be training by myself for this race, since my team doesn't usually send anyone to Houston.  But that was OK - I've done that before.

 As it turned out, though, this year was an anomaly with a total of 11 people from my team doing either the full or the half at Houston.   A very pleasant surprise, and it made the cycle a fun one.

***

Per my normal practice, I flew into Houston on Friday afternoon for the Sunday race.  I never like to fly the day before a race, both because long flights drain me and because of the risk of delays or cancellations.  As it turns out, Friday was a difficult day for air travel due to storms in the midwest.  Our flight (a teammate and I were on the same flight) ended up delayed for 90 minutes, and we were the lucky ones - many other flights in the same terminal were cancelled.    I was very grateful that I hadn't waited until Saturday to travel.

Once we landed in Houston, I defaulted to my standard pre-race routine - hanging out in my room save for brief excursions out to the race expo and to Chipotle (of course). While there was a Chipotle very close to my hotel, it was closed on weekends, so I took a tour of Houston using their light rail system, to the nearest open Chipotle.  Pre-race rituals are important - especially when they involve excellent corn tortilla  chips.

***

Race morning started very early for me with an alarm at 3:50 am (4:50 am DC time).  The race started at 7:00 am, and I needed to take my asthma meds three hours pre-race, so 3:50 it was.  Getting up that early had other advantages also - plenty of time to eat, drink, digest, and stretch, before taking a leisurely walk to the GRB center to drop off my bag.  (I left my hotel around 5:40 am)

Houston uses the GRB center as a pre- and post-race staging area, and it works really well.  Bag check was located inside, as were family meet-up areas and port-a-potties (referred to as "port-a-cans" here - somebody really needs to do a linguistics study of the different names for portable toilets by region).  There was also an area dedicated to stretching, with a selection of yoga mats for use - brilliant.

***

After briefly seeing my teammates at the GRB, and dropping off my bag, I headed out for my warm-up, jogging towards the well marked starting areas.  The ADP corral closed for entry at 6:35 am sharp, so I planned to do much of my warm-up outside the corral and then enter around 6:20, finishing my warm up in the corral - it was my understanding that the ADP corral had enough room to warm-up inside the corral. 

As it turned out though, there was no room to jog in the corral - apparently I had misunderstood.  So back out to do a bit more jogging before re-entering the corral at 6:30.  

Many of my teammates were also in the ADP corral - so we stood and chatted and did drills in place and bounced to House of Pain (actually that was just me) and debated how long we wanted to keep our throwaway clothes on.  It was pretty cold, so I delayed my strip time from 6:45 to 6:50 to 6:55 to 6:56:30, before reluctantly removing my sweatpants and top.  

[As an aside, music by "House of Pain" is an absolutely brilliant pre-race choice that works on multiple levels.  And much better than hearing that darn U2 song one more time.]

At 6:58 they released our corral and the A corral right behind us, and we jogged up to the front to line up behind the elites.  The jogging was not for optimal placement at the start line, but rather a quick attempt to loosen up after 20+ minutes of standing still.  Then, at 7:00 on the dot, we were off, running into a still dark Houston.

My plan was to stay conservative for the first 2-3 miles, and then hit a rhythm which I'd hold until I was close to the finish, when I'd start kicking.  I had looked at the course video and identified a slight decline a bit after the 2 mile mark that would be the perfect opportunity to upshift.  I've always found it easier and more logical to structure my race plan around geographic features of a course, rather than mile markers.  

It was hard to hold back those first two miles.  I was amped up and ready to run (and cold to boot).  And surrounded by those faster than me.  I had to repeatedly tap the metaphorical brakes and let others go past.  Surprisingly soon, I hit "my" decline and shifted into gear.

The Houston Half course is like Chicago in that it's very flat, with scenery that doesn't change much throughout.  Other than a brief tour through a nicely treelined neighborhood, it was a sequence of box stores and concrete.  Which was fine with me - I didn't come to Houston for the scenery.  The race course was marked in both kilometers and miles for the first seven miles, which made time pass quickly as I flowed forward.  

This race was a PR attempt on a fast course on a cold day, and so I ran a bit more aggressively than my norm. Nothing stupid, but definitely the harder side of tempo, rather than the safe side.  I was wearing my Vaporfly 4%s, which very much encourage a rolling stride, and I went with it.

The miles were ticking by, and I felt in control, though I was starting to work.  At mile 7 I took a last sip from my handheld water bottle and then tossed it.  Shortly thereafter, I fumbled with my Rocktane Gu (I had forgotten to pre-tear it).  I got it open and took half a slurp and...my gut started churning.  Nothing horribly urgent, but I decided not to finish the GU - this wasn't a marathon where I had to get nutrition in, and it wasn't worth the risk.  I did have a non-rocktane on me as well, but I decided not to try that one either.  Again, not worth the risk if my stomach was already on edge.

Somewhere after mile 8 things started to get hard.  This wasn't a total shock (I mean, it is a half-marathon race, and 8 miles is nearly 2/3rds in) but I was surprised at just how hard it got.  In retrospect, I think it was a combination of two things - a moderate headwind coming back, and my aggression earlier in the race catching up with me (which probably made the headwind seem a lot worse than it was).  I usually take at least one GU during a half, so not finishing my GU might have played a part as well.

Whatever the cause, I was hurting.  I was also by myself on a long bleak Houston road, with a few runners coming back to me very slowly.   I reminded myself that this was a rhythm course, and just to hold the rhythm.  Don't worry about the pace or what others were doing or what mile marker I had just passed, just lock into that rhythm as if I was dancing, and hold it until the end.

So that's what I did.  The last mile of the race was difficult - a mile-long stretch in downtown Houston with the finish line nowhere in sight.   I kept slipping into a bad mental place and then pulling myself out.  

Wonderfully, the race had posted signs at 800m and 400m to the finish (every race should do this, IMHO).  Once I saw those, things got slightly easier.   Even though I couldn't see the finish, I trusted the signs and visualized my last two laps in a track tempo.  It was time to close strong, and so I stretched up and emptied the tank, kicking as best I could (though the Vaporfly 4% is NOT a good shoe for kicking).  And then, thankfully, I saw the clock ticking down 1:25:4x, and I knew I was going to break 86.  And then I was done.

My final splits were:
Miles 1-2: 13:33 (average of 6:46)
Mile 3: 6:26
Mile 4: 6:30
Mile 5: 6:24
Mile 6: 6:25
Mile 7: 6:29
Mile 8: 6:23 (I think I hit lap a bit early)
Mile 9: 6:39 (see note for mile 8)
Mile 10: 6:31
Mile 11: 6:33
Mile 12: 6:32
Mile 13: 6:32
last bit: 46 seconds

A more or less well paced race, but I think I would have benefited from being a bit more patient in the early part of the race, around miles 3-6.  I'm usually a very strong closer, and I wasn't on Sunday.  

But I'm not too upset about it.  I was able to hang tough when things got hard (blowing up a bit in my tune-up 5K was actually very useful practice), and I broke 86.  Perhaps next time I'll be able to break 85.

Other notes:

• I stayed at the Club Quarters, which was a great location.  Nice hotel, with a CVS nearby and easy access to Houston's light rail system.
  
• On the flight over, both my seat mate and another person in the row were clearly sick.  Thankfully, I was wearing a flu mask, which I pressed to my face with one hand the entire time to ensure no gaps.  Upon landing, like the race induced hypochondriac that I am, I ran immediately to the bathroom, where I washed hands, then face, and then zinc-swabbed my nostrils prophylacticly.
  
• For the duration of my stay in Houston, I had issues with my throat and sinuses burning slightly.  At first, I was sure I was getting sick (damn seatmates, damn airplane).  And then, when checking the weather, I realized that Houston was having a bad air quality day.  A trip downstairs to the hotel gym, where the air was heavily filtered, confirmed that it was Houston, not me. 
  
  I was worried I'd have some breathing issues on race morning, but fortunately that turned out not to be the case, save for one stretch early on where we ran through a bit of smoke or similar.  I tightened up briefly, but then things loosened up as soon as we moved past that block.  Whew!
  
• I ended up winning my age group (women 40-44) and was fourth female master, losing to three women in the 45-49 age group.  While I never like losing, it's pretty cool to lose to several women older than myself.
  
• I wore the Vaporfly 4% for this race, and thought it worked well.  Of course, I don't know if I would have run faster or slower in the Adios.  But the Vaporfly was an excellent shoe to hit a rhythm in, and the extra cushioning probably didn't hurt on a concrete course.  I'm definitely still very sore and beaten up this morning, but that's what happens when you race a half-marathon all out.  I do think that I would have been able to kick faster in the Adios - my kicking is all about getting up on my toes and increasing my cadence, and I can't really do either in the Vaporfly.
  
• A teammate and I, who are of similar abilities and had a similar race schedule this past fall before targeting this half, finished in essentially identical times (she got me by 2 seconds).  This was despite having utterly different pacing strategies and training schedules.  My training for this race was characterized by very slow easy days, limited volume and length of long runs, and an emphasis on track workouts, while her easy runs were more moderately paced, her volume was higher, and she emphasized marathon-like strengthwork.  Similarly, I went out very conservatively and then dropped the pace, while she ran a more even race  (we do the same thing in workouts - I descend in pace in my workouts, while she hits even splits). 
  
  I'm noting this because I think it's a beautiful illustration of how there is no one perfect way to train, taper, or execute on race day.  I think that if she trained or paced like I do, she wouldn't run anywhere near as well.  And the inverse is true too.  Though there are some absolute rules (hard to run a solid half marathon on 10 miles a week; don't do a track workout if you're limping), there's also a lot of individuality that has to be recognized.  Don't conclude that if someone is training differently from you that it means that one of you is wrong.  There is more than one right way in running.