Pittsburgh Half Marathon Recap

This weekend I completed my second half marathon in Pittsburgh. Jon dropped me off close to the start line around 6:20am for a 7:00am start time. The weather was perfect...55 and sunny! I didn't have a specific goal  in mind for this race, but I knew I wanted to finish under 2 hours again, like I did in DC 6 weeks earlier. I figured, if I've done it before, I can do it again! However, this time I had a knee injury to deal with. No big deal. 

The day before the race, Jon and I went to the Expo to pick up my race packet. I had received an email a few weeks ago about purchasing a memorial Run for Boston race bib, so I was excited to pick up this sweet tank to wear for race day!

Look how close I was to the start line! When I registered, I decided to exaggerate my finish time a bit so I could get assigned a corral closer up to the start line. That's cheating, I know. But I learned my lesson from DC. The further back you are, the more people you have to weave around, and it definitely made a huge impact on my 1st mile time. In DC, I was about 10 corrals back and my first mile was 9+ minutes. For this race, I was in the 2nd corral and my first mile was a 7:24...score! 

This is my "unofficial" finish time from my GPS. I took this screen shot from my phone about 1/2 mile from the finish line. Once again, it said I ran a total of 13.6 miles when I crossed the finish line...so I wasn't too happy about that! I tried really hard to take the sharp turns and do tight corners this time, but I guess it didn't help me out too much. I could really tell a difference between this race and DC. I didn't run any long distances in April, so that had a pretty big impact on my strength and endurance this time around. 

I did set a PR for a 10K! My first 6 miles were done in 48:25 - an average 8:04 min/mile. Pretty pumped about that! But then around mile 7-8 my knee really started to ache, so I slowed it down a bit. I hate to admit it, but I actually had to walk for a minute or two. The hills were killer. We crossed 5 different bridges around Pittsburgh, and each bridge consisted of an intense slope up and back down. You'd think the downhills would be easy and helpful...that was not so much the case for my knee.

Here's my Runner of Steel finisher medal! I placed 4621 of 13977 overall and 1994 of 8548 for the women's category. 

I've decided to take a few months off from signing up for any races until my knee is better. It's fine when I have my brace on and I do anywhere from 3-6 miles, but anything longer than that, it's pretty bad...even with the brace on.  I made sure to ice my knees right when I got home. I am still very sore today and don't think I'll be running much at all this week.

Here's a shot Jon took of me after the race trying to make my way up the stairs. 

He's very helpful :) 

5/7/2013: Miles run - 327 of 1000. Miles remaining - 673 of 1000