Kris' Post: Tour de Ashland

On December 5th I ran in the Tour de Ashland, which is a half-marathon hosted by a small city (Ashland, OH) about 220 miles from East Lansing. The whole family drove down Friday night after the Ward Christmas Party (where we sang Silent Night). I trained pretty hard for this half-marathon and I met my goal pace...so I thought. It was interesting that I was using my very old GPS watch (Forerunner 201 for those of you who are wondering) and either the watch was a bit off or I took some wide turns around most of the turns in the race. According to my watch I was under the 8:25 pace that I had set out to achieve (the watch said I ran at 8:21 pace - even though I forgot to stop it until 15 seconds after the race and I was reaching for a banana - see the watch log below). However, it turns out that my watch said I ran 13.3 miles, which it factored in with my time.


When you put my official time of 1:50:45 under scrutiny (for a 13.1 mile race) it is actually 8:28 pace. Bummer. I am pretty sure that because I wasn't careful to run the shortest distance around every corner I probably did run about 13.3 miles and thus I did meet my goal in terms of pace. But that is not what the race results will show. See them here if you are interested.

Anyway, I am pretty happy about my pace because the course was SO hilly. Man I was worried when I drove into the town of Ashland and saw that this place was not flat like most of Ohio (at least the parts I had been to before this). Training in flat East Lansing, MI was not much preparation for what I saw here. Yet, I still met my goal (in my eyes). I guess I will have to try again next year with concerted effort to take the turns tight (and maybe even a new watch). Here are some pics from the race.

Here is the start of the race.


Mile 8 - Girls cheering me on.


Finish line with the family. It was freezing!!!


Here is the Google map of Ashland, OH with my GPS data overlayed on it. Click on it for a closer look.

If anyone is interested here are the individual laps for the race for me (note I forgot to hit the lap button on mile 6 so there are only 12 laps for a 13 mile race).