Brooklyn Half Marathon recap

Well, yesterday was the Brooklyn Half. I hadn't quite decided before the race whether I was going to take it kind of easy and treat it as a nice longrun with my roommate Danny, or if I was going to just go for it and attempt a p.r.

The morning started out very groggy, as for some reason me and Elle thought it would be a good idea to split a bottle of Prosecco and have a few beers with dinner. Well, needless to say, that had me waking up feeling a little less then stellar. At the start of the race though I decided I would go out at a decent pace, see how I felt, and assess it from there. The first few miles my whole body felt really draggy. My initial goal (assuming I was going for the p.r. still), was to try and break 80 minutes, which would be an average pace of 6:06/mile. The first few miles I was averaging about 6:15's and even those seemed like a struggle. I fought off my demons that were telling me to just slow down and join Danny (who in his "taking it easy" still ran an 84:30 race), and I sucked it up and kept going for it. Around mile 5 finally my body felt the way it should, and the rest of the race seemed to breeze on by. I felt nice and calm and steady and ended up running a negative split to finish in 1:18:43 which is an average of 6:00/mile pace. A new p.r. by over 2 minutes!

So, what I learned is, prosecco before a race = bad idea. But at the end of the day I was completely psyched about my run.

A couple of observations about the setup of the course. It kind of disappoints me that for the Brooklyn half marathon, there is so many amazing areas of brooklyn to explore and the NYRR choose to spend over half of the race in Prospect Park. Don't get me wrong. I love the park and run it all the time and I feel it should certainly be part of the course, but I would have much rather the course only included one loop of the park which would open up 3.5 miles that could be run elsewhere. Also, the park is kind of a mess when the front runners are on their second loop and are passing runners still on their first loop and the divisions between the two are vague, causing it to be an obstacle course at times for the front runners. Another reason to only have there be one loop of the park. Ocean Parkway I find to be a little boring after a couple miles when I run it on my own, but for some reason yesterday it was really enjoyable and went by very quickly. And, finally, I do love the finish on the boardwalk. It is a great feeling to run up the ramp and see the water and run along the beach to the finish.