Race Report: 2011 Queens Half Marathon

Race started a bit late due to lateness in traffic closure. Gun time was scheduled to be 7am, but started 15 minutes later. Coming into this half marathon from Ironman Lake Placid only a week away I wasn’t expecting a PR race performance whatsoever. The goal of this race was to finish and get one step closer to getting my guaranteed registration for 2012 NYC Half marathon. To get guaranteed registration you need to have completed four NYRR half marathons. As of Queens Half I have one more to go.

Anh wasn’t able to run the Queens Half because she has NYC Tri this weekend and needs to taper for that race. She took some cool race photos of me at mile 8 and the finish.

The course was very forgiving which is a next reason I opted to run it a week after my Ironman. Right from the start I was feeling relaxed and good overall. I only began to feel my legs a tard bit heavy at mile 6. Expected after racing 140.6 miles the week before. I was able to run up the one hill x 2 of the course without any issues. My achilles were a bit tight early on, but when I slowed my pace and stride it went away. For most of the latter miles I ran and maintained the pace of a group of runners. Those runners would open up a gap on me due to my slowdown in pace. However during the last 4 miles I was back to picking up the pace and started to pass quite a number of runners who slowed down considerably due to the heat or others issues of the day.

There wasn’t any walking on this course for me today. I quickly grabbed gatorade or water at all the aid stations and was on my way. I took 2 meta salt tablets pre race and 2 more during the race. It was a hot day in Queens with temperatures soaring to the lower 90s and I wasn’t taking any chances with cramps. I also took a powerbar gel at mile 6-7.

I am very pleased with my performance at the Queens Half marathon especially during the last 4 miles where I really felt great and picked up my pacing. This may be the fact that I surprisingly saw Anh cheering me on at mile 8. I expected to only see her at the finish. Seeing her definitely gave me new found legs at mile 8.

Mile 8

One unfortunate mishap was that my D-Tag did not register my time across the finish mat. Thank God for finish photos. I sent the race photographers finish photo to NYRR for review of my final time. I am still puzzled as to what went wrong with the D-Tag.

Finish Time: 1:36:47

Approaching the finish