Race Recap: Grete's Great Gallop

Grete's Great Gallop, a half marathon in Central Park, began at 10:30 AM yesterday.  The late start made the morning easy (no 5am wakeup for this one).  The course was different from most other Central Park races that I've run.  It started on the east side and went clockwise around the park, rather than counter-clockwise as usual.  We ran ran just over two laps around the park finishing on the west side.  This means during the race, runners passed the finish line twice before actually passing over it.

The start line!

The first lap around the park wasn't so bad, the race leaders finished as I was passing the finish line for the second time.  They weren't even twice as fast as me (since they had a 3 minute head start)!  It was weird to run the "wrong" way around the park.  The hills that I usually dread were now the easy parts of the course, while the opposite happened with bits of the course that I normally look forward to.

It was cool during the first lap of the race, especially when there was breeze.  However, once the sun came out it warmed up.  I was a bit overdressed for the sunny conditions!  Next time, I should wear layers.

I kept a fairly steady pace throughout the race, with mile times between 9:00 - 9:30.  By mile 9 I thought I could finish in under 2 hours but I had slower miles after that as my hamstrings really started to hurt.  I finished in 2:05, so I'm still chasing a sub 2 hour half marathon.

Alek also ran this one finishing in 2:15:08.  Full results are available on the NYRR site.

We finished (only a little sore).