City of Oaks Half Marathon Race Report

So 2 years ago I ran the City Of Oaks Marathon. Definitely a very hard marathon. Raleigh is know for it's hills. The marathon and half start at NC State, run through downtown and Cameron Village, then over toward the fairgrounds. The marathon then splits from the half at about 8.5 miles, and goes up towards and into Umstead. It returns back to the half split and completes the same way the half does.

I remember the part of the marathon that is not shared with the half being the harder part. I also remember thinking that the part that is shared with the half wasn't that hard. Now that I've run just the half, I can honestly say I must have blocked it out of my mind back then. Holy crap is this course hard. I think the hardest part had to be going through the neighborhood around Cameron Village. I felt like the hills wouldn't stop. None of them were killer on their own, but all together is was about 3-4 miles of almost constant climbing. In general, this course has tons of hills scattered around. There really isn't a point where you can say that is easy. Though I think after the 8.5 mile turnaround the rest of the course gets easier. There are some hills, but only one that I can say really hurts, which is the part when you get back to Western Blvd.

Even though my weight has creeped up to around 200, I've had a very fast year. I've PR'd the 5K distance a couple of times in the last 2 months, and came close to PR'ing my 10 mile distance in September. Overall, I've really been impressed with my improvements this year. That being said, I didn't know what to expect for this race. I was targeting a PR, 2:05, but wasn't sure it was attainable. My prior PR for a half was on the Mistletoe Half in Winston Salem, which is a fairly nice course. I ran that in 2:06:53. That was almost 3 years ago and was my first half marathon, so I felt confident 2:05 was a good goal. I never expected to beat my goal by so much, though.

Here are my splits:
Mile 1: 9:28
Mile 2: 8:54
Mile 3: 9:12
Mile 4: 903
Mile 5: 9:15
Mile 6: 9:33
Mile 7: 9:39
Mile 8: 9:30
Mile 9: 9:22
Mile 10: 9:23
Mile 11: 9:04
Mile 12: 9:02
Mile 13: 9:07
Last .19: 1:28 (7:36 pace)
Final: 2:02:01

Overall, it was a great race.