Urban Half Marathon – an A for an A race

Running in 2026 has been solid, but not my best. The highlights have been the masters 4-mile championship road race followed by the June half marathon. I won the age group for these events and have been reached 90% age grade on four occasions, but have not knocked on out of the park–at say 91 or 92% age grade.

Last weekend’s half was a key race, and I marked it as co-equal to October’s marathon.

Training

Although the marathon is kind of the end game for the year I wanted to be almost every bit as ready for this weekend’s half. Since the 4th of July I have had weeks of 61, 65, 63, 68, 66, 46 (sick), 75, 71, and 72 miles. However, note that a number of those weeks along the way had 7-day running totals in the 70s and 80s. Also about a month ago, I shifted back from purely marathon workouts to incorporating some half marathon-specific workouts to prepare for Sunday’s race. My self-critique of June’s race was that I had spent much of the spring doing sub-threshold work and broken tempos (6:35 to 6:50 pace), and when race day rolled around anything faster than 6:35 felt too fast. This time I ran some more reps at 6:30 or under, as well as incorporating weekly workouts that include 10K effort or faster.

Last week’s 5K was part of the plan, although I did not reach my goal of sub 19, let alone sub 18:50 I think running 6:10-12 was a good stimulus.

Following a big week through September 5th and 6th I took a hard taper, running 35 miles from Sunday through Saturday. And I only did a light workout of a few 800s and 200s on Tuesday as a final little tune-up.

The Race

This might be my favorite race in my new state. It’s not overwhelmingly big or crowded. They cap the entries at 2000 and in the two years that I have run the event, it has not come close to filling up. The course is fast, but not completely flat because you have to navigate six hills that are about 300 or 400 m long. It’s fairly scenic a double loop on a parkway that circumnavigates around two urban lakes. Although the field is not big, it’s competitive with the open winners running national class times, or close to it.

The weather here is hit and miss. We have had a hot and humid summer, and it stayed warm through last week. But over the weekend things cooled down and race day was near perfect, 55 degrees at the start with 70 percent humidity (a little high), and practically no wind (light breeze from the north).

I warmed up with a friend and lined up, only to be held on the line for an extra five minutes and an interminable rendition of the national anthem. The singer had a nice voice, but goodness, that was long!

It took about seven seconds to cross the starting mats and we were off. I went out too hard last year (about 19:00) for the first three miles and then had to work just to hang on. This time I wanted an easier go of it through those middle miles, and hoped to close fast.

We settled into a decent pace after the hectic first mile and I found a nice pack to go around the first lake, there were seven or eight of us. At first I was leading the group but the third mile I tucked in behind them. This time the first three were in about 19:26, so a lot more controlled than in 2025. The course basically a figure 8, with a long neck in the middle. That’s the hilly section and it has the most crowds so it’s kind of fun going through a quarter mile of not quite a scream tunnel but a definitely a lot of shouting and cheering.

The wind was more noticeable heading north along the shore of the second lake and I just stayed in the group. They picked up the pace in the fifth mile, from about 6:30 to low 6:20s. I stayed with the group for a mile or so, but the pace felt a little too fast for the middle part of the race, so I eased up slightly. My teammate caught up just before six miles and we ran together for about a mile, crossing 10K in 40:25. I caught up to another friend at 7 and we also ran together for a mile. That mile has the double punchy hill on the south side of the lake and we split an 6:38, slowest of the day. I knew I’d need to run average 6:30 pace or under for the rest of the race or I would not reach my A+ goal of sub 1:25 (the A goal was 90% age grade), so I picked up the effort and focused on catching runners ahead. The leaders of the pack I had been through the first 10K pulled away. By 9 mile I was feeling the breathing a bit, but we had a little group of three and I just focused on keeping in contact with them. And that’s pretty much how it went.

I split the 10 mile split in 1:04:57 and would need run about 6:27 pace for 3.1 miles to run under 1:25. I just did not have it. I stayed close to my compatriots (who were not doing a good job of running the tangents!), but that’s about all I could do, with splits of 6:35, 6:36, and 6:26 I did not quite have enough in the tank and finished in 1:25:14. Good enough for an easy age group win (3rd among those 55 and and older), and the overall age grade winner for men! Age grading at 90.4% and 1:03:35. I’m happy with it.

Finishing

Next up, this has been a recovery week and then two more weeks of training before the taper. I have a couple tough long runs to do, and two or three perfunctory threshold-10K pace type workouts on the training schedule. Meanwhile, enjoying the time after a hard effort!