High Speed Pursuit Half Marathon

So last Sunday I ran the High Speed Pursuit at the Prison Half Marathon. 

I kind of decided last minute to run this race. My work was supposed to have a booth so I registered on Monday (the week of the race), but they ended up not being able to attend the race. Either way I was glad I registered. It benefited the Peace Officers Memorial Fund. I love when registrations fees go to a great cause.

Getting ready to head to the race, wearing my BLUE, capris cause it was kinda cold and sparkle red headband

The race started out at the Idaho State Correctional Institute (the prison). It's actually about 25 min away, out in pretty much the middle of no where. The beginning was kind of chaotic. They had odd packet pick up times (Wed and Thur the week of the race only between 4-6) so I had to pick up my packet race morning. The odd thing was they had 2 lines to get your stuff. The first line was bib/shirt pickup and second was timing chip pick up. I was chatting with the girl behind me how we were cutting it close to the starting time and still had to stand in a whole other line when she ended up recognizing me from a race earlier this past summer, funny thing about small races is you see a lot of the same people :)

I finally made it thru both lines and still had to go drop of my stuff in my car so I sprinted back dropped it off and tried to do a quick warm up to make my 14 miles for the day. I wanted to use the porta potty one last time but there was a huge line. I was debating going out to where all the cars were parked and told that to the lady in front of me, she was thinking the same thing so we said lets just do it. So we sprinted out to the cars with about 4 minutes till start time, squatted and did our business. We both laughed and ran to the start line. The national anthem was being sung and there was also a stunt plane doing some tricks up above. Before we new it there was a loud bang and then the prison alarm sounded as we all took off. I thought that was actually really cool. A few yards away was the prison CERT team (Correctional Emergency Responce Team) lining both sides of the road with full on gear (sorry no picture but they looked similar to a SWAT team with full on shields).

There was also a 5k and 10k and we all started at the same time which was odd but it didn't bother me too much. I started far enough back to not start out to fast with all the short distance runners but also far enough ahead to not be held up by walkers.

The website didn't really have a course description and I didn't know anyone who had ran this race so I didn't really know what to expect when I got out there. My plan was to at least average out a 9 min pace cause that was my goal pace for my 14 mile training that day anyway. I felt surprisingly good and was holding about an average 8:30 pace for most of the first half. This pace actually felt really good. My pace started slowing at about mile 8 and I could feel that we were running at an incline now. I had to walk a few times on some of the bigger inclines. And then I see the 12 mile marker, but right after that is a big hill. I cursed whoever made up this course and how evil they were for putting a hill at the last mile. I tried hard to run but I ended up walking a little bit too. But right after the hill I refused to walk and sped up as much as my legs allowed. The person in front of me was too far up to catch but I made sure no one passed me at the end.

The elevation map from my garmin confirmed the second half being at an incline but overall I was very happy to cross with a sub 2.

Official time was 1:56:32. 7th in my age group (out of 27) and 40 out of 166 overall.

My sweet medal...

Here's a few pictures from the race...

Short one on the right ;)

My attempt at smiling for the photographers...

And I'll leave you with the cutest picture ever... as I was trying to take pictures of my medal and race shirt my dog Dash decided he wanted some attention....