Riverton Half Marathon, 2013 (Half #20)

What a fun morning! Plans were I was to pace Becca Wood and see what time we could get her in this looped course - half marathon. Our goal was for a finish time of 2:15:00. I hadn't run much the previous week as I was still trashed from that fast downhill training run we did the previous Saturday. I really wasn't sure how my legs would stand up over 13 miles.

It was so nice the race didn't start until 9am so plans were I could get a decent sleep after work before the race. It didn't quite work out that way as I spent my time from 3am till about 6am on the phone dealing with a broken down bus in Wendover. But 7am I was up and at it. Got to the parking lot at the city of Riverton around 8am and walked over to the starting line to meet up with the others. Met Dave a fellow runner I've seen at a few races and first met on the bus with RunGr8 going to Farmington last year. Josh and Becca were at the City Hall parking lot so walked back there to give Josh his packet, also rounded up Camille. Slowly before the race we were able to meet up with everyone, Christy, Elvia, Quesnel, saw Jonathan from a distance with his 1:50 pace sign, Jennifer was pacing the 2:00 group.

Was introduced to a few new people before the race, Cathy Twitchell and also Victor pushing his son. I asked about Marsha Monson, but nobody had seen her.

Got a few pictures taken, then they moved everyone to the west side of the starting/finishing line. A few antsy moments and the horn went and we were off and running. 60 seconds after the gun we crossed the starting pads and everyone started their Garmins and such.

It took a few minutes to get into our pace. I was hoping to keep a pace under 10m/m to bank some time for us later in the race. We did that with the first mile at 9:52. I listened to my music with one ear piece and listened to Becca not talking much with the other ear ;) The second mile we also did a pace of 9:52, then had some downhill into the river bottom on mile three and did 9:29.

Just after mile 3 we crossed the Jordan River and headed north, passing people who were already closing in on the 5 mile mark, the speedsters! High fived a lot of them as they headed south with us going north. Jonathan, Jennifer, Quesnel etc. That was a fun part of the course. Did a loop at the north end and then headed south again. We then passed others who were a little behind us, Josh, Elvia, Christy, Camille...

The first 5 miles we averaged a 9:49 pace. Pretty solid in my opinion!

From that point it was pretty flat until about mile 7 where we climbed what I've been told is Beaver hill. There's a pond on the west side of the trail that's filled by a very hot spring. Before that, I pointed out to Becca a place where a young girl was murdered about a year and a half ago.

Becca did awesome on the hill! It wasn't until very close to the top she decided to take a short walking break and then were were coasting down the other side.

Our pace for miles 6 - 12 averaged 10:44, so we slowed down some, but there were two hills and it was the toughest part of the course. Later we heard the second hill is called Satan's hill. Very good name! Overall I was surprised there was over 1500' of gain throughout the course. Didn't think it was that much, but my Garmin and Becca's both showed a huge climb.

There were awesome inspirational signs throughout the course. My favorite was "The next best thing to running is talking about running!" So fitting for our chatty group on Facebook.

One thing that concerned us through out the course was our Garmins were showing the mile markers were out by about 3 tenths of a mile which would make the course about 13.5 miles in length, WAY too long for a half. I thought if they can't get this right, I won't be back next year unless they fix it. Reminded me of Sojo. This created a huge problem for the pacers as they still had to finish at the proper time even if the course was too long, so they were playing catch up all the time. We had a nice surprise at the end though.

When we got into the final mile, I wanted us to push harder, use up all the fuel we had left and Becca did it! We did fartleks for a bit, passed a few people then partway through the final mile we realized there's no way we are that far from the finish and knew they had corrected the distance in the final stretch. The course would be the proper length, Yay! By this time the pacers had realized the same thing so were too fast and had to waste time walking so they didn't cross the finish line too soon.

Our last mile was at a 9:35 pace and we crossed the finish line at 2:13:50 chip time according to my Garmin. Only about 4 minutes short of Becca's PR which she got in a canyon race which are always very fast. She did awesome and will easily break two hours in the next downhill race. Maybe even 1:55! I think she was pretty excited about how well she did on a difficult course. Although she said she was too tired to show it lol.

For the next hour we cheered others running down the chute, met up with the rest of our group and entered a draw for a free pair of running shoes from RunGr8. Pictures were taken of people crossing the finish line, getting massages and of our little group together although a few were missing from it. We also visited with a girl who had a small dog which ran 11 miles of the half with her. Turned out later we found out she was the missing Marsha Monson from our group!

Overall it was a fun day with wonderful friends. Very successful if you ask me!

Official Results: 2:13:53.2 Age Group: 7/10. Overall Men: 154/199 Overall: 290/458