Apr 06, 2011 | by: Beth Atnip

Coach Eric and I (and a few other Mideast Multisport athletes) participated in the Run the Bluegrass Half Marathon this past weekend. We headed out to the course about an hour and a half early to ride our trainers for 30 to 35 minutes before the race as a warm-up. We thought this would be a good idea given the fact that we have a big triathlon coming up on April 17th, Ironman 70.3 New Orleans. We warmed up before the race, got plenty of weird looks as we were on our bikes, but it felt good to warm-up on the bike before the run. Jamie Johnson and Joe Stone also warmed up with us, and Jamie and I had a plan to run the half marathon together.

We lined up around 5 minutes until race time, and I was a little unsure how the day was going to turn out since I had already ran 35 miles for the week heading into this race. I told Jamie that I wanted to hold right around a 7 minute pace, and that was pretty much the only goal that I had set for myself. We were treated at the start line by Susan Bradley-Cox, who was the official started of the race! It was awesome having my hero there to start us on this 13.1 mile journey. She is so amazing!!! So the horn went off and we were on our way. Unfortunately I forgot to set my garmin to auto lap, so Jamie ended up being the auto lap guy for the race. I asked him to tell me the splits that the garmin was reading, and I was going to give the splits for the course mile markers. We started off pretty easy, hitting our first mile around 6:53, right where we wanted to be. After the second mile, we could already tell that the mile markers were not in line with the Garmin, so we started guessing which one to follow. I told Jamie that as long as we are under 7 minute pace according to their mile markers, we would be fine.

The first 6.55 miles went by without any problems, and we hit right at 44:38 at the half way point. We knew at that time that the Garmin splits were right, and the mile marker splits were a bit off. But we were still in good shape, and were headed back home. We were going to have the wind for about 4 miles on the way back , which I was looking forward to. We cruised through mile 8, 9 and 10, holding between a 6:30 to 6:40 pace. Mile 11 and 12 were back in the horse park and we ended up having the wind in our faces again, but we still made it through around a 6:45 to 6;50 pace. At the 12th mile marker, I could tell Jamie wanted to take off to try and make it under 1:30:00. I told him to go ahead and that I would be in shortly behind him. We later found out that we were well under 1:30:00 pace since the 12th and 13th mile markers were off, and we were both going to make it well under our goal of 7 min pace. Jamie crossed around 1:28:30 and I crossed at 1:28:59, right at a 6:46 min pace. I was SUPER happy with this result, as this was a 3 minutes PR for me. The pace during the race was very comfortable, and my average HR was only 156 bpm, which was perfect! Eric also had a GREAT race, finishing at 1:36 and some change. This was his half marathon PR, so I know he was super happy! We had several other MM athletes who raced and ended up with a PR (Nina and Zack), so a big congrats to those two!!!

Splits from race via Jamie's Garmin: Splits from the race:

1) 6:54.69
2) 6:53.11
3) 6:47.05
4) 6:45.86
5) 6:55.82
6) 6:44.41
7) 6:55.26
8) 6:46.73
9) 6:39.04
10) 6:45.83
11) 6:33.48
12) 6:41.18
13) 6:36.64
.1) 1:02.55

Overall it was a great race, well orgranized, and I cannot wait to race again next year. A big thanks to 3-Way Racing for their efforts and to Eric Patrick Marr from LeXenomics for putting on such a great event! A big shout out to Shannon Florea for getting 2nd place overall in the female division, and her husband Jonathan Feddock for winning the whole thing! What a fast couple!!!

This gives me a confidence boost heading into NOLA 70.3 on April 17th. I am pretty excited about how my run has been progressing, especially when my leg is still not 100%. I need to continue to work on my core strength and to continue to work on my run gait. I can still make improvements as I continue to get stronger in the weight room and by running hills. I hope that someday I will actually look like a runner in my race photos, ha!

Until next time,
Coach Beth

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