Citizens Bank Caesar Rodney Half Marathon

Yesterday, March 9th, I was in Wilmington, DE for their Citizens Bank Caesar Rodney Half Marathon. It was not a warm day and it was windy, it may be the worst in race conditions I have faced so far. As is usual I got a bit caught up in the race day energy and ran a much faster mile I than I should have (9:49) but I did not really pay for it this time. The first few miles I was caught in a bit of a cross wind for the majority of the time but it did not seem to effect my speed. This was kind of a windy course through Wilmington and but for the cops and race volunteers I would have gotten lost. Thanks to all those who were out there helping the runners out it was really appreciated.

Then we looped back around and made it back to about where we started at near mile 6. I felt really good and had maintained about a 10:40 pace to this point. However, the danger was coming. At about mile 6.5 or so starts a very long incline to the turn around point at mile 9.5. It was mostly incline to this point. I will tell you I bled some time here. I was averaging about 11:45 through this stretch. I have to thank former heavy weight champ Jack Dempsey for helping through this one. I was chanting, "champions get up when they can't" for those three miles. I was forcing some speed and I think I saved my race on this hill. I could have easily been at 13:00 if I had let my mind get out of the game.

After the turn around I bounded back down the hill and picked up some speed but I will tell you my thighs are a bit burned today from the downhill of 3 miles. The nice thing was that after I got back down I was able to maintain about an 11:10 pace for miles 12 and 13. I had a small hill to climb to get to the finish but it was no big deal and I felt like I had another 4 to 6 miles left in the tank.

If this had been a flat course I think I could have averaged 11:05 to 11:10. However, 11:19 is fine and it is a huge improvement over my 12:36 from last September. So it is a PR, but I haven't been running that long so they are mostly PR's these days.

I had a great time even with the weather, it was a nice race. They even had pizza at the finish, mmmm, pizza.