Emerald City Half Marathon Race Report

Today I ran the Emerald City Half Marathon in Dublin, Ohio!

I left on Saturday and the first stop in town was at Fleet Feet Columbus for packet pickup. They were giving $50 off either the Asics Speedstar or DS-Trainer, so I just had to take advantage. The DS-Trainer was a shoe I had been curious about anyways, so I tried them on the treadmill for a minute or two and decided to take them home. $60 for a new shoe is a pretty good deal in my book.

I did my pre-race carb loading at CiCi’s pizza. Not good pizza by any means but it seemed to be a safe choice. I found the race start and drove the part of the course that I could. Then went back to the hotel, Marriott Courtyard, and settled in. I turned off the TV about 10PM and woke up about midnight with thunderstorms. And I was up about every hour after that for one reason or another it seemed. I guess I just couldn’t get comfortable, was nervous, and the storms were loud. So while I was awake when the alarm went off, I sure didn’t feel rested! And the weather radar showed a storm cell bearing down on Dublin.

I got to the starting area around 6:15 and I could see lightning off in the distance. They did a coupe of weather updates, and it started to lightly drizzle, but in the end, we were off on time.

I thought I had read that they weren’t going to have pacers, but they did. My goal was to finish under 2:00, so I tried to keep those folks nearby the entire time. There was a time or two that I felt like passing them and pushing faster, but I decided not to. I just wanted to finish under 2:00 and I could tell that we were well on pace to do so. I think that the turn around maybe wasn’t quite the halfway point because we did take a slightly different route back.

The course was pretty much entirely flat. The first 3 miles were on a city street then a two lane road, but then we went off on to a multi-use path through a nature preserve area. There were a few wooded areas but most of it was just meadows with tall grass on either side of the trail. That was about 7 miles of out and back on that trail, and it was pleasant enough. Not the most exciting course, but pleasant and basically flat. I walked through most of the water stops, getting a cup of Gatorade and water at most of them, and took a Roctane gel around mile 5. Around the 11.5 mile mark the pacer seemed to take off on me a little bit and I wasn’t in the mood to try and stay with them. I think they ended up finishing about 30 – 45 seconds in front of me. My mile paces seemed up jump up and down from 8:45 to 9:15. Part of that may be due to the walking at the water stops, but since I was close to the pacers I think their paces were varying as well. I finished feeling pretty decent and not completely drained or in pain.

I ended up finishing in 1:58:55, which is my fastest half this year, and my second fastest of the five that I’ve done. I had some water and Gatorade and oranges in the chute, then headed for the car and skipped the post race party at BW3 because I was completely soaked from sweat. I went back to the hotel, showered, checked out, and then back to BW3. I had a few boneless wings, some fries, a free screwdriver, and decided to head for home.

The tech shirt was a white Asics shirt with a small logo on the chest and back covered by the sponsors’ logos. I wish the front were a bit more decorated – the women’s shirt had a big logo on the front. The medal they gave was big and heavy though. Very nice. I liked that the bib had my name on it – it was neat that some of the waterstop volunteers cheered my name. Nice touch.

All in all, a very nice little race and I’m glad I decided to make the short drive over there to run it!