Mercer Island Half Marathon 03/09/2008 - Improvement

What better way to gauge my improvement than to run another half marathon just six weeks later. I had always planned on running the 2008 Mercer Island Half Marathon after running the 10km version the previous year. Another motivation... Team in Training alums had used the 2007 race as preparation for their successful 2007 Ironman Canada campaign.

After analyzing how well I felt after our practice half marathon just six weeks previous I thought I would again let heart rate dictate my pace... except I would increase the upper threshold by a few beats per minute. While this would normally allow me to run a faster pace the trip around Mercer Island is quite a bit hillier than the relative flat course we ran for our practice.

However, just a few days before the event I came down with a cold. Nevertheless I was at the start line ready to test my fitness in a real race.

All data courtesy of my Garmin Forerunner 305:

Mile	Avg Pace	Avg Heart Rate
1	7m45s	149 bpm
2	7m55s	160 bpm
3	8m07s	162 bpm
4	8m12s	164 bpm
5	8m01s	163 bpm
6	8m21s	163 bpm
7	8m22s	163 bpm
8	8m22s	162 bpm
9	8m19s	161 bpm
10	8m24s	163 bpm
11	7m39s	164 bpm
12	8m06s	167 bpm
13	7m56s	167 bpm

Official time for the 13.1 miles was 1h47m06s with a chip time of 1h46m55s. An improvement of nearly four minutes even though this was on a much more difficult course and my fitness was compromised by a cold. My training appears to be on track!