I’m just going to throw this out there — last weekend rocked.

The big event was traveling to Richmond to run a half marathon, which seemed like a bit of an overly ambitious task given that I hadn’t exactly trained a ton for the race.  In case that sounds like I’m just being humble, consider that when I set my personal best at this distance two years ago I was running about 25 miles per week.  There have been several months this year in which I didn’t run a total of 25 miles.

With that in mind, I started the race with my sister-in-law Bethany, as we worked towards a somewhat lofty goal of finishing in 1 hour 50 minutes.  The last time we ran a half marathon together was when I did get my best time (1:43:08), and this course was much flatter, so at least I had the right conditions going for me.

In the first mile Bethany asked me how I thought our pace was:

C:  “Good…a little fast maybe.”
B:  “Fast?! I was thinking slow.”

In order to hit our goal time, we needed to keep a pace of about 8:23 per mile.  Our first mile time — 8:45.  We picked it up from there cranking out 8:04, 8:04, 8:07, 8:41, 8:07, with watch-less, psychic Bethany guessing our sixth mile time exactly on her first try.

From that it seems like things were going great, but we were asking each other after each mile, “We can’t actually hold this pace, right?”  Fortunately we slowed down a touch for the next three, going 8:13, 8:37, 8:25.

In Raleigh in 2009, I went ahead after mile 7 and felt great picking up the pace straight through the finish.  This time, I left Bethany with a high-five after mile 9 and as I surged ahead immediately felt like I may have made a poor move.  My left knee started hurting and I could feel the effects of all those early fast miles catch up to me quickly.

Fortunately, as I walked for a second at the water stop in the next mile (8:24), the knee quieted down a bit and my brain was able to convince my body that with just three miles to go I should just suck it up and go.  I also did some quick math and told myself that if I could just keep them under 9 minutes, I could reach what seemed like kind of a crazy goal just an hour earlier.

The result was closing out with miles of 8:20, 8:14 and 7:52, and covering the final tenth of a mile in 42 seconds to finish at 1:48:41 overall.  My second-best half marathon ever on easily the least training.

Given that my best time came after a ton of training and was followed two weeks later by a stress fracture in my foot, maybe there’s something to this whole non-training thing.  Though as we walked to the car after the race, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, what if I had trained more?”

Maybe next year.

And next year I think may be a requirement.  My aunt and cousins in Richmond were awesome hosts, giving us a ride to the start line at 6 a.m., feeding us and cheering us on.  They had as much fun as we did, and it was great to experience that with them.

Another highlight, my brother’s forethought when signing up for the race.  They gave us the option of putting our names on our race numbers, which means random spectators on the course can call out your name and give you encouragement.  I didn’t have mine on there, Bethany had her name, but Ben, who ran the full marathon, went with this:

Go Neb!