Earlier today I completed my first half marathon trail race, the Haulin Aspen, in Bend, OR.  It was a well done event, and overall quite a good time.  My official finish time was 2:06:16, but my watch had 2 hours 5 minutes and some seconds.  Close enough :)  I'm pleased with my time, as I was thinking it'd take 2:15.  But oddly, I'm left not as happy as I should have been.

Prep this morning went great, and I was nice and relaxed at the start.  The first mile of the race was a bit harsh, kinda fast for me, big time dry mouth action in the dry air there, and since I rarely race, just harder to start at such speed.  This was mediated by the fact that I saw I'd done about an 8.5 minute first mile though.  For me that's pretty fast, although that first mile was mostly flat.  I kept thinking I should slow down a bit, and I did feel like I did settle in to my own pace, so I was quite stoked when at the 4 mile mark, I saw I was just under 32 minutes, so now averaging 8 minute miles!  Very good for me, and I was pretty pumped.  Also, at that four mile mark, I was finally feeling pretty solid.  I was also happy to see that my watch mileage lined up perfectly with theirs, so that'd be nice for checking my progress.  That didn't last long though...

Soon after you hit the hill.  It's a wide dirt and gravel road, and climbs, with no shade, for I think about 1.5 miles (I think they state it's about a 1300' gain).  I knew this was coming, but it just wound up draining me quite a bit.  That's a lot longer sustained climb than anything I've ever done.  I did walk a few bits, and I probably should have walked more.  But man, in a race, you're just in the spirit of it, and you don't want to be walking!

The hill finally tops out, there's an aid station (the second one I just ran through, since I was carrying water and gels), and you do a quick bit more singletrack climbing.  Then it is mostly rolling.  A bit after this, we saw one the 19 mile mark, so we'd obviously rejoined the marathon course.  What sucked though, was that this would mean I had 7 miles to go, and thus was only 6 miles yet.  Yet my watch said I was something like 7.5 miles in!  Not a small discrepancy.  I had not really been able to pick up the pace any more either, even though we were done climbing.  This was also about the point I finally decided to try to take a leak, and as I figured, not much came out, but hey, at least the sensation was gone :)

This reminds me that, while on the main hill climb, there was a younger girl (18?) just a bit in front of me.  I could see her keep looking back as she'd jump into the bushes, and then back out.  I covered my eyes in an obvious way to say, go for it, I won't look.  Finally the third time she jumped into the bushes she stayed there.  This was pretty early in the climb.  And I swear maybe a mile or so later (after she's caught and passed me, grrr), she pulls over for another one!  She still finished the race ahead of me, although just a little :)

Anyway, the course continued to roll, few bits of more downhill stuff too.  Even a couple real short, slightly technical sections which were fun!  I was getting pretty beat though.  My watch said we'd done 10.5 miles, but I knew that was way ahead.  But, I kept thinking, ok, just roughly 30 minutes more, you can do that.  I was walking more often now too.

Finally, you could star to hear cheers and could tell we were getting to the bottom.  And then, we came into Shevlin park, sort of ran almost into some honey buckets (go team!) and made a 90 degree right onto....  an uphill paved road!  This was NOT a good point in the race for me.  All I could think was, "fuck, they are finishing the race on a paved uphill?!?!"  That section of pavement felt like it took forever.  I already knew I wasn't going to break 2 hours, but if the finish was at the end of the pavement I just might (since I knew this paved section was supposedly 0.7 miles, according to the announcement at the start).  I plodded along, looking for the covered bridge, as I knew that was the reason we were doing the pavement, so we could get to that.

Upon arriving at the covered bridge, the volunteers said you've got "about half a mile to go".  What?!?!  Ya, I wasn't happy.  Luckily it was back on to trail, but I was just beat at this point.  I tell ya, that is the longest half mile I've ever run!  It easily felt like a mile, and it took me almost that long (normal pace wise) to run it!  Oy.  So much for the 2 hour time.  Alas, the finish finally arrived, and I saw my beautiful wife, and things began to get better :)  I wound up 21st in my age group, and I think 124th overall (out of 353 I believe).

Reflecting on the race, while my time was a lot faster than I expected, I think why I'm not as happy as I could be is that that ending really just kind of sucked.  The paved uphill was just a real bummer kind of thing for me to finish with.  Plus, I realized, when you physically can't see, and don't know where the finish is, that makes things hard.  I wouldn't have thought that, but I realize that was one of the tough things.  In the end, my watch read 14.6 miles, so that had messed me up a little.  However, the flip side of all this is that I really want to get under two hours now.  So, maybe that's part of the problem with getting that close to 2 hours.  Maybe if I had gone 2:15, I'd have been like, ya, that's about what I expected, fine.  But, now that the two hours was only those 5 minutes away, and that finish was so brutal (for me), I think I just could taste the 2, and wanted it that much more.  Alas, gives me a goal.  It also showed me that I can run faster, and that I need to practice that a bit too.  It's made me realize that since I can't go run 10+ miles each run, when I do the shorter runs, I do need to ramp up the speed, and hopefully that'll help with upping my speed overall.  So, overall, a pretty good outcome, and I'm pretty excited to have my first half marathon in the bag!