Joplin Memorial Run

When I planned out my training cycle for the Boston Marathon, I was a little bummed I wasn't able to work a half-marathon in. All the halves close to me were either during my taper or too close after the race. I get emails about the Joplin Memorial Run because I have run it in the past and I saw this year was going to be their last year. Since it was the last year I decided I had to do it. Thomas was planning to run the half so I was in, as long as my recovery after the marathon went well. I've never run a half-marathon so close after running a marathon, my only experience with racing within a month of a marathon have been 5ks. I don't know why it never crossed my mind to run a shorter distance in Joplin, but once I decided I was doing it, it was always going to be the half. In hindsight, I should have gone with a shorter distance because I was not as recovered from the marathon as I believed myself to be, but how else do you learn than through experience? I ran the Dylan Meier Get Busy Livin 5k less than 2 weeks after Boston and it didn't feel great. Since I was winning, I cruised after my first mile and the 2 miles at around 7:30 pace felt like something I could maintain for longer. In my head, I'd had a little over 4 weeks of recovery after Boston so I should be recovered and ready to roll for the half. I was comparing running this half to running the Half N Half back in December a month after the Route 66 Half-Marathon and I ran it in 7:34 pace. In my head, I thought I would be capable of running 7:30-7:40 pace for this race. I planned to finish in 1:40-1:45, but hoped the race may go better than I imagined and I would be under 1:40. 

For this trip Ty stayed in Tulsa with Carter because he had a sleepover that night and we wanted him to get a good night's sleep on Friday beforehand. The race starts at 6:30 am which means leaving my parents' house around 5:45 and we knew even if we tried to be quiet, Carter would wake up. My mom had planned to go to the race but as we were getting ready, she felt bad about waking Elise so early so she decided to stay home with Elise so she could sleep. Tesla was in bed with Elise and heard everyone moving around, getting ready, so she started whining and woke Elise up right as we were getting ready to leave. Elise wanted to go with us, so we waited while she got ready and left the house later than planned. We picked Thomas up and were off. They changed the start and finish this year so the start wasn't as easy to get to and we arrived with less than 10 minutes to the start. Dad dropped me and Thomas off as close as he could get and I went straight to the porta potties because I really needed to go and would rather start the race late than have to stop off during the race. I ended up making it to the start corral a minute before the gun went off. 

Elise had fun in the finish line area with Mom while dad ran the 5k which started 15 minutes after the half.

We took off and I felt great. I was really excited thinking I was in better shape than I expected and was going to have such an awesome race and fun time. I didn't look at my watch except for my mile splits and planned to just run what felt good. I was a little confused at the start because we were hitting sections of the course way earlier than I remembered them the year before. Our first mile was where we hit the 5k point last year and then I remembered the start was in a different place, but the course was the same. It was a weird feeling for me. I went through the first mile in 7:30 and was surprised. My plan had been to start at 7:40 at the fastest, but I felt great and went with it. It was much cooler than I was used to for my runs because I had been running after work instead of in the morning so I wasn't used to the cooler morning temps and that played a part in me feeling so great. My next 2 miles were 7:37 and 7:36 which was still faster than I had planned but there are some nice downhills in that section of the race, so I decided that was okay and I wouldn't pull back from what felt good. During mile 4 people I had been running with started to pull ahead of me and I felt like I was running the same pace, but realized I must be slowing. My 4th mile was 7:48 and that's when my legs told me the start of the race had been too fast. Suddenly after the 4th mile, my legs were exhausted. I was like, great, I've figured out I wasn't fully recovered from my marathon 4 miles into a 13 mile race! I decided to just coast it in and continue running a pace that felt okay, even though my legs felt super heavy. I knew the race wasn't necessarily going to be fun, but I'd finish.

Mile 5 was 7:58 and I felt a little discouraged that I was running marathon pace during a half. It also wasn't fun to be getting passed. It was a fairly steady stream from that point on in the race. Mile 6 was 8:00 and the results have my halfway split at 50:53. I enjoyed running through a balloon arch at the halfway point and remembered that section of the course was around 8 miles in last year and I was wishing I was at 8 miles instead of halfway, haha! Mile 7 was 7:49 and mile 8 was 8:11. I was surprised by how rough my legs still felt with so many miles at or slower than my marathon pace. I'm not really sure why I expected this race to go better than it did, looking back at my training between Boston and this. My legs were feeling rough for quite a while after and I tried out strides the week before the race to see how things would feel running faster. I didn't attempt anything at tempo or race pace other than the 5k because my legs were feeling so heavy. My longest run after Boston was 8 miles up until this race, so also not the smartest move.

I got passed by a woman around this point in the race and at first I thought I'd latch on and try to run with her, but my legs immediately told me no thanks, so I focused on not slowing down too much and trying to keep it to where I could see her in the final miles. Mile 9 was 8:08 and mile 10 was 8:02. The results show I went through 10 miles in 1:18:44. What's crazy to me is that I was consistently slowing throughout the race and I felt like I was constantly getting passed, but the results show I was 64th overall at the 3.5 mile split, 62nd overall at halfway, and 61st overall at 10 miles so even though I was getting passed, I must have been passing people as well. I got excited for the last 5k and told myself to just maintain until the last 2 miles and then I'd try to push back under 8:00 pace for the last 2 miles. Mile 11 was 8:10. I got passed by a girl around in there. Once she passed me, she didn't gap me so my goal was to slowly reel her in. I felt like I was really picking up the pace, but mile 12 was only 8:00. During the last mile I really started picking up the pace and reeling her in, but then she started picking it up too so I ended up just maintaining the gap. The finishing straight away was over a half-mile long. From my memory it was around 3/4 of a mile long and it seemed to go on forever. I preferred last year's finish because you turned on to the road and had a much shorter stretch until you made it to the finish line. It was rough seeing the finish line and still having so long to go, especially because I wasn't feeling great. I thought I had started to slow because the woman ahead of me started pulling away and creating a bigger gap, but I hadn't and totally rocked my last mile, comparatively. My last mile was 7:35 and I ran the last portion of the race in 7:09 pace which looks so slow watching the finish line video, but felt much faster in the moment!

I know the heat slowed people down. It was nice at the start of the race but heated up fast and was very warm by the end of the race. This also isn't the fastest course. Thomas was in shape to run sub-1:35 and he finished in 1:38:25. I knew there was no way I could have run sub-1:40 in these conditions so soon after a marathon if Thomas tapered for the race and was only 1:30 under. He was 37th out of 722 overall and 9th out of 48 in his age group. My finishing time was 1:43:20 which put me 63rd overall and 3rd out of 61 in my age group. It was nice to still place in my age group, even through I ran the half at my marathon pace. I was a little in my head about running a half in a pace I ran back to back halves in at Houston. But really it was probably more realistic for me to run this race at marathon pace and I probably would have had a lot more fun if I had started at marathon pace and then tried to drop the pace after the half-way point. If I ever run a half-marathon this soon after a marathon, that will be my plan. Without knowing what to expect, I think I was just overconfident in what I could accomplish. Dad ran the 5k in 26:11 which put him 88th out of 1,063 overall and 1st out of 16 in his age group.

We hung around after to see dad and Thomas' co-worker, Michaela finish the race. Then we went to get free food. This race has a crazy amount of free food after the race. I got some pineapple whip right after I finished and then later got a Chick fil A sandwich. There was also barbeque and Jimmy John's. Elise didn't want any of the free food and was getting grumpy because she had her heart set on McDonald's breakfast so we stopped and got her some on the way home. Overall, I was glad I ran this race. I just wished I had known better what to expect and had planned a pacing strategy that worked better for where I was in my recovery. You live and you learn and it'll go better if there is a next time. I'm sad to see this race go, although a half marathon in May usually means terrible weather for this race! My time from last year would have placed 5th overall this year while I was 2nd last year, so I picked the best year to be in good shape and run a decent time! With it being the last year of the race it was more competitive this year than it was in the past. 

JMR Results Over the Years:

2017- 2nd Co-Ed Marathon Relay Team (3:32:14, my 7.74 leg in 7:36 pace)

2019- 2nd Co-Ed Half Marathon Relay Team (1:31:16, my 5k split in 6:37 pace)

2023- 2nd overall female in the half (1:35:56)