The 2021 Leaf Peepers Half Marathon came just a week after my 70.3, so I had very few expectations and didn’t really know what would happen. Great circumstances for my mental state, if nothing else. This race is always fun, and I was fully prepared to have it.
The hardest part of any half, I find, is the pacing. The mental control it takes to moderate your effort until the right moments can be as difficult as running the distance, if not more so.
The mistakes I made this year were telling myself it’s flat (it’s not) and forgetting where the turnaround point was. Things I would never have done if I hadn’t been so casual about the lead-in, feeling so much pressure already off from putting the 70.3 behind me. But nothing that terribly ruined my performance.
I managed a negative split trend, I had legs to kick the last 5k and mile 13 was my fastest. I’ve never achieved those things before in a 13.1.
It was just a few minutes short of a PR, but that PR was set with a small taper lead-in and I absolutely destroyed myself achieving it. This was fast, strong and smart.
I’ll take that any day of the week.
