CORVALLIS HALF PREVIEW

This Sunday is the Corvallis Half Marathon in beautiful Corvallis, Oregon. For those of you who don't know, Corvallis is the home to Oregon State University, which happens to be my alma mater. Corvallis holds a special place in my heart, so returning there for a race is always fun. I have done the Fall Festival Run for two years now and also did the Great Pumpkin Run 10k last October.

Fortunately the race starts at 9:30am so it's not super early. I'm still going to have to wake up by 7am and haul it down there, but I'll survive. Just have to make sure to get some decent sleep the night before. I'd like to get a coffee to drink on the way there and hopefully have it exit my body before the race starts, but we'll see if that happens.

This will be only my second ever half marathon. If you remember, I absolutely crushed my first one, so following up that performance will be a challenge. I feel like I was in better shape back then; maybe not to run 13 miles, but to run it fast.

Since last summer I've really increased my ability to run longer distances, but I feel like I sacrificed speed to get there. I've had some really solid training the last three months (spare the two week Vegas disruption) and that should help me out. I did have some higher mileage weeks last summer before the race (high 20s, compared to lower 20s now) so we'll see if that does anything.

The course seems to almost circle the entire City of Corvallis. Not quite, but almost! It should be a pretty fun course, we start by the stadium and then run downtown before looping back through campus and then out through the fields towards 53rd Street and the Fairgrounds. We then run a nature trail that was part of the Great Pumpkin Run before heading up 53rd (turns into Walnut) up toward the north side of town.

There is a small hill there. They mention on the website there are two small hills and of course I had to plot them out and see how bad we are talking. Overall they are gradual climbs of 150 to 200 feet. Nothing too terrible, but they will be noticeable. This will put me at a slight disadvantage since the Run in the Country was nearly all flat. However, running around my house and training runs like Zena and Shamrock have prepared me well. These won't be an issue at all.

We then fly due south back towards the stadium. This should be slightly downhill and will help because at this point everyone will be ready to be done. We'll finally get to finish inside Reser Stadium after they dick around with us for another mile (Reser Stadium will be right in front of us but we'll have to take a dozen block detour, kind of like waiting in lines at Disneyland). That part will be painful.

It will be all worth it though because we get to finish inside Reser Stadium at the 50 yard line. My favorite place in the whole world pretty much! It should be really fun because all the after race goodies are right there as well. They open up the stadium seating for spectators too, so hopefully they'll be a sizable contingent rooting us on.

My goals for the race are as follows:

A Goal: Set a new half marathon PR. This will be 1:42:31 or less. A perfect day and I can do this. If my legs feel fresh and I feel well rested I think I can break this. It's going to be hard though because this course is a little tougher.

B Goal: Less than 1:45. If I can get less than 1:45 that means I did under 8:00/mile and over 13.1 miles that is pretty fucking good. I can be very satisfied with this.

C Goal: Less than 1:50. That is about 8:20/mile. If I am not feeling it for some reason even a hard effort could come in right about here. I just want a 1 and a 4 to be the first two numbers. Anything less than this would be a failure in my eyes barring injury.