Not just half a race ...

13.1 Bling
(Courtesy leduardo @ Flickr)

With dozens of posts here hailing the glory and significance of the marathon race distance over these past few months, the timelapserunner has never once waxed eloquent about that step-sister distance: the half-marathon. The Half, as I'll call it for this post's purposes, just hasn't had the glamour attached to it that other races have. It's not the mile, with all its nostalgic lore. It's not the 5K or the 10K which are both very popular road races and also distances which even track and field claims as part of its purview. And of course it's not the marathon, as race that people die for, or from - as the case may be. No, it's just some orphaned middling distance that the road racers sneer at and the marathoners make fun of. No longer, it would seem. The Half is getting respect.


Perhaps the timelapserunner has never mentioned the Half because he'd never actually run one before. He has mile, 5K, 10K, and even 1 hour PRs to his credit, but he'd never run the Half so maybe that's why he's given it no respect. In fact, the longest distance to his credit has been some lonely 12-miler he put in more than twenty-five years ago when training for ... well, to be honest, I can't remember what the purpose of that 12-miler was.

Today all that has changed.

Today the timelapserunner did his first Half.

Two laps around the Lakes and City Park + a bit extra.

Strictly speaking, the Half is 13.1094 miles. So today's 13-miler (would have been tomorrow's, but that's another story) was lengthened to 13.12 miles, just to be sure.

Time: 2:59:04

Felt good, but tiring. Longest run in my life. But that record won't stand for twenty-five years; it'll fall in two weeks.