A Story Of Hills and a PR (Almost)

So this morning I ran the Hospital Hill half marathon here in KC. It’s billed as the second oldest half in the country and is reputedly one of the hilliest. Personally I think the latter is true. I’ve run both the San Francisco Half and Hospital Hill and HH is definitely the harder of the two.

Since today was my third time doing this race, I had no expectations whatsoever. Since my goal for this and next year is getting better at my tri’s, today was a formality (at least in my mind). I didn’t have any time goals – I just wanted to finish strong and have fun. I ended up running it with two of my Runners Edge training buddies – Amy Reed and Heather Mayfield. Amy had the same attitude as I and I think Heather had no desire to do it until I started talking about the race a few weeks back.

Ok, I’ll cut to the chase. We all KICKED some serious ASS today! Amy set a half marathon PR by 9 seconds, I missed a PR by a little more than a minute and Heather ran it just 9 minutes slower than her rocket fast time in Lincoln last month. Mind you, the HH is incredibly hilly and our previous PRs were on flat courses, so our accomplishments today are nothing short of amazing. So how did we all do so well?

• Conditions: Pretty much perfect. Temps in the 60’s with some nice winds.
• The Company: We all stayed together until about mile 8 and Heather and stayed together until about mile 12.5
• Pre race meal: I can’t speak for Heather and Amy, but I had a cheeseburger, fries and a Fat Tire at the Flea last night.

Whatever the reason, we did incredibly well!

So to Amy, Heather, the rest of my Runner’s Edge buddies and of course all of those who participated in the Hill – good job! You all kicked butt today and made our hometown race a huge success AGAIN!