Music City Half Marathon

Since it was only $35 and on a fast course, I decided to run the Music City Half Marathon and hopefully run it as a steadier pace. The winner usually runs this around 1:18 or so, so I was hoping to show up and run 5:40ish effort, which would be a solid but not overbearing pace. If someone ran faster than that, I would man up and race but I was really hoping to run

The week before this, I came down with some mystery flu-like illness, where my body had a high fever and a lot of aches, pains and chills. The fever lasted for less than 24 hours before disappearing. I was still really weak for a few days afterward, and then the fever decided to rear it's ugly head and put me on my butt again. I was debating skipping this race but for the past couple of days, I felt a little better (despite a constant, hacking cough) and really hoped I could still stick to my plan of 5:40s.

I ran three miles for my warm-up, which is a little longer than usual for a half-marathon but I was hoping to get in some good mileage during the morning. When it was time to race and the gun went off, I got out really relaxed and no one wanted to take the pace. I took the lead a few seconds into the race and was fortunate enough to keep it the rest of the way.

I finished in 1:14:06, with splits of 5:57, 5:37, 5:49, 5:46, 5:44, 5:40, 5:39, 5:28, 5:34, 5:31, 5:29, 5:34, 5:42, 35. I felt sluggish for the first half of the race, loosened up some in the middle and backed off the last mile because I started getting a little tired. Overall, I was happy with the performance considering my body is still beat up from being sick.

I enjoyed this race a lot. The admission is almost 1/3 the cost of the Country Music Half Marathon and the course is nice and flat (the course is almost identical to the Tom King Half Marathon).