Philly Half

Sunday Sept 16th, was the Philly Half marathon. I woke up just after 6am and got ready to head into the city for the 8am start, I had stayed in Norristown at Brock's house which worked out really well. As I was heading into the City I realized I had left my watch at the house, kinda sucked but it wasn't something that I couldn't live without. Arrived in Philly at 7:05 to find a place to park, spotted a garage that was 12bucks for the day figured it would be good. I didn't realize that I was parking about a mile from the start line this was my first mistake of the day, Once i finally got to the start I was scrambling to get going. I changed up then searched around for bag check in, after asking around I found it, checked my bag which had my phone (only way to tell time) at this point I new that I must get a warm-up in this was also the same time they called up to the line.

Once in the corral I talked with Tom O'Grady and Scott Bessette which calmed me down a bit, I was in corral 1 so right behind the elites. A pretty cool moment was being 3-4 rows behind Ritz, once the gun went off I slowly made my way out at .5m in I spotted Jen Donovan (who beat me at blessing of the fleet) I decided to run near her for the early stages to not do anything else dumb (besides no warm-up) we ran together thru 4m. The only splits that I have are the ones provided from the live tracker I hit 3m at 17:37 which felt easy and my legs we comfortable I believe I hit 5 around 28:4x something and at this point was in no mans land for a little while, the second half of the race goes up one side of the river and down the other I was missing not having my watch at this point I was trying to see how I was doing based on the clocks at the mile marks but didn't plan out what I would have to hit for my goal time, this made the clocks kinda useless to me. I finally get into a group around 7m and was running well with them just latching on and not having to do much work, I felt like I could hang with them and thought I would make a move around 11m this plan went to shit pretty quick about a mile later my right quad started to tighten to the point it reduced me to a shuffle. I decided it would be best to stop and stretch it out (first stretch of the day) this helped a little but also screwed me because I had lost contact with the group. After this stop it was really all down hill for me I hit 10 in 59:39 and new at best I could run 78mins, my quad never really loosened up and by 11m it was over I jogged off to the side and just ran in relaxed and slow. I didn't want to risk doing anything to my leg with Hartford so close, this was a bit of a disappointment with it being such a fast course. After the race I was sitting on a blind corner stretching out and got another opportunity to see Ritz run by this was the highlight of the race.

Overall not very happy with this race, its worse when I have done training runs faster. The only thing I can do now if get ready for Hartford and remember at all cost get a warm-up in.