One Step Forward...& Two Steps Back......

W/C 6.5
Monday 6.5 Rest Day
Tuesday 6.6 12 miles: 1.36.58 8.05 mile pace 1332 Calories burned
Wednesday 6.7 12 miles:1.34.33 7.53 mile pace 1357 Calories burned
Thursday 6.8 10 miles:1.21.32 8.09 mile pace 1112 Calories burned
Friday 6.9 Rest Day
Saturday 6.10 6 miles:51.27 8.35 mile pace 678 Calories burned
Sunday 6.11: Half Marathon 1.50.18 8.25 mile pace 1432 Calories burned
5 day/54mpw*
*1/2 marathon plus mile warm up......too feckin knackered for mile cool down.......

So,Iced Tea glass half full a five day training week complete w/ back to back to back days Tue thro Thur which is the blueprint moving forward
Glass half empty,slowest ever half marathon by some 14 minutes..........
I'm not the type to "gloss over" the bad days at the office.....or conveniently get too busy to post a blog so I will get to the "nuts and bolts of this mornings......monumental fuck up in due course.

As for the week leading upto today,Wednesday's 1.34.33/7.53 12 miler gave me optimism that my pre race aim of a 1.30 half marathon was doable....a week after I struggled like hell to log a 13 miler,as stated by yours truly "a week is a long time in running" sadly as it turned out this morning a few days in running can also be a LONG time......
I knew I was in for a  LONG race day when I arrived at Memorial Hall in Fairmont Park at 6.30am for a 7am start and inexplicably involuntarily lost my morning Earl Grey Tea,I know I'm prone to pre race nerves{I have said in the past 41 years "I'd be nervous if I wasn't nervous"} pre race but it's been a while since I've thrown up....then again it's almost 11 years since I last ran a half marathon.
Perhaps foolishly I believed a 1.30 half marathon was there for the taking,given only five weeks ago at Broad St I ran a 1.18.18 10 miler I might have done  better to aim for a 1.42 finish but for reasons best known to myself I felt a 1.30 was doable and thus my undoing was sealed.

Off a 6.28 opening mile I worked my way upto 14th.......and then dramatically slid backwards through the field over the following 12 miles,it's been a while since I've ran that "boneheaded" a race.....I hope it's a while b4 I run another.
6.52 for mile 2 in keeping w/ the 1.30/7 min mile pace,even at 7am it was already hot and humid and pouring water over my head was the order of the day,19th at mile 3 w/ a 6.36 mile as we exited Fairmont Park and onto West River Dr.
27.20 at mile 4 thanks to a 7.24 mile,I have to say I'm only recanting my mile splits via my Garmin as during the race I was too focused on each mile ahead of me.
Up and over Strawberry Mansion bridge,sadly out on the bridge and asphalt and not the wood of the sidewalk,I could have used the "give" the wood would have given my legs.

8.09/35.29 at mile 5 I was already in "no mans land" and to add further insult to injury the 1.35 mile pacer went by me,the 1.30 pacer had gone by me b4 Strawberry Mansion bridge....and the old adage that"once the toothpaste is out of the tube you can't put it back in" was coming home to rule the roost.
8.23/43.52 at mile 6 en route to a halfway split of 48.41.....a potential 1.37 which was already slower than my previous pw {personal worst} over 13.1 the now infamous East London Half Marathon  of 1985 1.36.29.....but frankly at this point I would have willingly taken it as the first wave of "do you want to drop out?" washed over me.....in a 41 year career I have only DNF'd {did not finish} once and that was tactical as I had a race the following day but I knew as I made the turn onto Kelly Drive a long morning was about to get longer.......

7.49/51.01 at mile 7 b4 a 8.45/59.46 at mile 8.....and then I stopped.......
Remarkably I got through the whole Broad St 10 w/out stopping but it wasn't as hot and humid May 7th as it was this morning.
My options were:throw myself at the mercy of a First Aid motorized stretcher and beg for a ride back to the finish,deviate off Kelly Dr and walk over Strawberry Mansion bridge to get to Fairmount Park w/out having to run to and over Falls bridge,claim I thought it was a Duathlon and swim across the Schuykill river......OR suck it up,put on my big boy running pants and get the fuck on w/ it......#thelatter

9.43/69.29 at mile 9,maybe crossing Falls bridge and getting on W.River Dr would inspire me to dig deep and make my way to Fairmount Park.....or not!!!!!
Despite a 9.13 mile that had me at 1.18.42 at mile 10 which was close to the 1.18.18 I'd ran at BSR I stopped to walk again,however I was hell bent on making this the last stop...which might explain the 12.11 split for mile 11/ 1.30.53....a time I had foolishly believed would be close to my finishing time.

8.48/1.39.01 at mile 12 as the slow painful grind uphill into Fairmont Park sapped the final life out of my already tired legs off W.River Dr,on a good day I would have relished the challenge but today I was too  knackered to curse the feckin ejit who designed to course!!!!
1.48.07 at mile 13 off a 9.06 mile as the  finish was now just ahead and despite having "left it all out there" I found a final vestige of a kick to cross the line in 1.50.18......I couldn't even brake 1.50.....wtf!!

Post mortem yes the heat was a bitch....but guess what? the Philly Rock & Roll Half Marathon is in September when the potential for heat and humidity are high so I won't use that as a crutch.
At the end of the day I allowed my ego to run amok{maybe my ego should have ran this half marathon today??!!!} w/ hindsight{a wonderful thing no????!!!} 1.30 for the Philly R&R 1/2 would have been a more realistic target off my 1.18.18 BSR,and along those lines 1.42 today was more realistic....which given the heat would've made this mornings 1.50.18 an easier pill to swallow......

What's done is done,leaving me w/ sleepless nights and not my opponents....but count me out at your own peril,the F in Kevin F Forde is actually for Francis but right now...and for the next 14 weeks till Sept 17th it's gonna stand for Feisty.......you have been put on notice.....