Thunder Road Half Marathon

Last Saturday I ran the Thunder Road Half Marathon in Charlotte, the race that I have most consistently run since I started doing distance racing again back in 2006.  I like this race for a number of reasons:  one is it is in Charlotte, which is kind of a second home to me and one of the handful of towns that I've ever lived in besides Durham, Detroit, Chapel Hill, and Athens.  Erica's family all live there.  I like Charlotte, especially relative to Atlanta, though to be fair I only stay in the very nicest parts of the city--Myers Park and Dilworth.  My friend Eric Whiteside lives in Charlotte so I always get to see him.  It's close to Athens, and the course is interesting.  They've moved it from December to November, evidently for shopping reasons (!) but I'm just as happy because the last time I did the race back in 2010 it was gonad-numbingly cold.

I've run three 1:35s in this race (2007, 2008, 2010), one magnificent 1:32 (2008), and a respectable 1:34 this year.  That was good enough for 80th overall, 14th in my age group, a 7:10/mile pace.  It's a amazing to me that the difference between my 1:32:07 and my 1:34:01 is a measly 7 seconds/mile. It all adds up.  I ran Thunder Road one month after a slow 1:36:10 for the Athens Half in October.  What I learned from the Athens Half is that I really do need to start conservatively.  I think I could have run Athens faster, but I started slowly and cautiously sped up to a low 7-minute/mile pace.  Actually, given the training that I did, I was suprised to get a 1:36 in Athens.  So I took the same strategy to Charlotte and I like the results.  Below are my mile splits for the Charlotte half.  Mile 2 is a bit of a mystery and the 6:57 was a bit of a shock.  The last mile is uphill. Overall, the negative splits suggests that this is way that I run as a middle-aged athlete.

Splits

1. 7:13
2. 7:42
3. 7:16
4. 7:08
5. 7:12
6. 6:57
7. 7:07
8. 7:07
9. 7:05
10. 7:03
11. 7:05
12. 7:05
13. 7:17

I'd like to find another half marathon in December or January or Februrary that is close but the only ones I'm finding are suspicious looking.