Kirkland Half Marathon Results and Race Report

This weekend saw Gerry racing the Kirkland Half Marathon where he crushed his old PR by nearly 12 minutes going 1:22:40 and taking 7th overall (2nd AG). See his race report below:

Going into this race I knew I had a big PR in me, but still I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Training had given me a good idea of what I could run, but when looking at the course with the first 3 miles significantly uphill and really not getting much of a break until 7 miles in I really wasn’t sure what good splits would be the first few miles. I decided that with miles 8-10 being massively downhill, I could afford to commit to a hard pace early and if I needed it I could recover a bit on that section without losing too much time.
By the end of the first mile I was running in the 2nd pack on the road with a group of 10-ish guys just in front. After hitting mile 5 with my small group I was feeling very strong, so I went to the front of the group and started to build my pace on the long shallow dragging hill of miles 5, 6 and 7. By the time I hit mile 7 and started descending back toward Lake Washington I had gapped the group, and started bringing in some of the stragglers who had gone out with the lead pack.
I had expected/hoped that strong downhill running would reel in some of the guys in front, but I actually think I lost a bit of time on the steep descent. Once we hit Lake Washington Blvd and it was back to tempo running I was consistently bringing in the guys in front, catching on at about mile 9.5 and another close to mile 11.
When I hit mile 12 just before entering Juanita Beach Park there was one more guy I could see about 40-50 yards in front of me. He was looking pretty strong and I honestly didn’t know if I could catch him, but decided to go for it because even if I blew up at this point the result was still going to be a huge PR. Went hard closing with a 5:54 mile, catching and passing into 7th place with about .25 miles to the finish.
I am really pleased with the result. I went into the race figuring 1:24 was the goal and 1:23 would be best case, so to pull an extra few seconds out of that time on a fairly challenging/hilly course was really satisfying.