February 28, 2016:

I had never run a half marathon by itself before, so I thought it would be beneficial to me to give it a shot. I figured this would be the best way to see what my max effort is and then translate the data I gather into a useful tool for my half-Ironmans. Now, the Augusta half-Ironman is notorious for being flat. I just assumed this would be flat as well. I was wrong.

For the first half of the race I was absolutely killing it. Then, there were these two hills that were soul-crushing. When I reached the 10 mile mark, I felt like I had more gas left in the tank. I decided I was just going to kick the last 5k and see if I could hold on that pace. Luckily, I was able to. My time was about 1:33.30, but if this was a truly flat course, I don’t see any reason I couldn’t get down around 1:30-1:31. I ended up finishing in 32nd overall, which I was very happy about.

Told you the hills were a little bit on the insane side.