Wow… I am actually writing a race report. This means I actually finished a race that involved me running. YAY!!!

The Pacific Half Marathon is a relatively local race that is fairly challenging due to the hills. This was the first time I had run the course but I had re-run some of it and I was fairly familiar with the whole course. My expectation for the race was to hopefully run under 2 hours due to the hills. My race plan was to run to feel, run even, run hard, and not walk any of the hills. I conveniently covered up my watch so I wasn’t able to see my splits or HR data and I just ran to feel. Below are the details.

I am THRILLED with the race! I ran 1:52:12, 8:33 min/mile, even with all the hills! That pace is less than 10 seconds off the pace I need for Mountains to the Beach at the end of May. It was a hard race but I was never working outside of myself. This was the confidence boost I needed! Only issue I had was a small amount of knee pain when running down one of the hills later in the race. That has me a little bit concerned since the upcoming marathon is mostly downhill, but not as steep as the section that hurt.

Best part of the day was having a stranger come up to me at the end complimenting me on running a good race (he couldn’t catch me). My run was good enough for 10/124 for my age group, 38/676 for women, and 168/1381 overall!