12/8/2013, Nittany Valley Half Marathon

12/8/2013, Nittany Valley Half Marathon

The morning dawned cold and overcast. 9F at 7 AM certainly qualified! I was in a quandry about what to wear for a long and cold run. I ended up with my CW-X tights, a black long sleeve tech, my Brooks Racing Team short sleeve tech and Brooks Nightlife jacket. My Brooks beanie, balaclava and heavy gloves were along for the ride too. I filled my Saloman/Camelback hydration pack with water though it did have a tube that I knew would freeze. I had a 5 oz bottle of Hammer Gel at the ready.

Packet pickup in the Ag Arean

Garmin Connect Activity for Warmup before the Nittany Valley Half Marathon.

Nothing like a new pair of Brook Adrenaline GTS 14 shoes!

My virgin shoes were on my feet with only a mile of warmup at 8:25 pace on them.  The packet pickup was in the Ag Arena which was what it sounds like. A big barn with an open dirt and straw area in the middle where livestock can be paraded. My hydration pack developed a leak due to my misthreading it when I filled it so I had to go with a hand bottle of water. There was no bib ... just a tag that you interlaced onto your shoes. Anyone could bandit this race if they wanted.

Profile:

It did warm up to 21F by the race start at 10 AM with overcast skies and calm winds. There was no announcements before the start. Just a horn and off we went. I was within 20 feet of the start.

The first 2 miles were a bit boring. We just looped on some roads around the Ag Arena twice before we hit open road. I had seen the elevation chart before the race so I knew what was coming. The roads were wide and had ample shoulders at first but soon both narrowed. This forced us onto the white line of the road or further in. The course was a bit weird with lots of right hand turns which put us on the right side of the road for long stretches. I did carefully cut a lot of tangents along the way.

I overheated a bit and lowered my balaclava at mile 3.5. The cold did bother me a bit but I was also a bit warm at times. My wife, Christine, drove the course and took some pictures around the airport at mile 6.

The fast downhill of 250 feet began at mile 7.5 to mile 8. I decided to let gravity work and kicked it into high gear. I reached a 5:48 pace briefly. A mile further on there was a brief but steep and twisty 100 foot uphill that reminded me of the same type of hill on the Freezeroo Hearnish 10K course. The miles were dragging on me. I tried to take a swig from my bottle of Hammer Gel at mile 10 but couldn't get much out since it had frozen up a bit. I did give a thought to the free beer table at mile 10.8 but instead took some water in another 100 yards. The long incline to the finish started at mile 11.5. It was a gentle incline but discouraging. I did the best I could to keep up a slow run. Finally I got to the finish. I didn't have anything left. My splits were: 7:16, 7:32, 7:20, 8:33, 8:20, 7:52, 7:49, 7:22, 7:34, 8:54, 8:43, 8:29, 9:01 and 6:40 over the last 0.09 mile.

I crossed the finish line in 1:45:19, 8:02 pace. Not bad for the first time on a difficult course with 676 feet of elevation gain. I was 164th out of 666, link here. I was 12th out of 31 in my M55-59 age group, link here.

I found some water and soon I felt human again. My darling Christine parked close to the finish ... thank you! We headed over to the Ag Arena where there was lots of Subway subs. Then it was back to Bill and Jill's for a much needed shower. We left State College around 3 PM and arrived back in Rochester at 7 PM. A long and fun weekend!