2015 MIAMI HALF MARATHON RACE PREVIEW

Last year.

Hard to believe I'm flying out to Miami tomorrow for the half marathon again. I don't know if this will become a yearly tradition, but tropical warmth in late January is never a bad thing. I'm actually going to be there one day more this year (going on Thursday instead of Friday) and hopefully that'll both extend my vacation and allow me to adjust to the timezone change a little better. I don't expect a full night's sleep before the race, but if I could get more than 90 minutes that would be ideal.

I'm determined to make this whole trip very low key. That includes the race. Last year I was shooting for a PR and ended up having a really difficult race. Trying to gun it in hot, humid Miami after months of training in the cool Pacific Northwest just isn't going to cut it. So my "goal" this year is to just enjoy the race instead of having it be a deathmarch.

One thing I am still not sure of is running the race with my friend or running it by myself. I kind of want to run it with my friend. He's trained better this year but still won't be able to run the whole thing. He's hoping to do intervals and run about 2/3rds of it, which would be eight miles. According to my calculations, his goal should be 2:45 or less. If I were to run it by myself I'd be shooting for something like 1:50-1:55. So less than an hour difference, but a big difference between steady 8:45s and 12:30s achieved with intervals.

Same course... hopefully more enjoyment this year!

However, I think I'm leaning toward running it with my friend. He doesn't want to slow me down and is encouraging me to run it faster if I want to, but I have the Zena Road Run the following weekend and I plan to hit that one hard. Even a 1:55 half here would probably still be felt at that race the following weekend. I have no delusions that the 2:45 will be easy, my body isn't used to that pace and my feet are going to hurt for sure, but I think I can recover more quickly from that and would also enjoy it a bit more. Plus, I think my friend will like to have me as company as he gives it his all.

We'll see though. I'm honestly not married to any one strategy. I'm just looking forward to the trip and having a good time! I think I might try to get out for an easy five mile run on Friday to try and adjust to the heat and humidity just a little. The weather for Sunday is supposed to be cooler than last year (mid 60s in the morning this time instead of mid 70s) so that should help things out. I get back on Monday night at 12:30am and I'm going to work on Tuesday... so that's going to suck.