B.A.A.? More like B. Ow. Ow.

Well, here we are. Post-race round up for the final BAA Distance Medley event: the half marathon.

I just read my pledge from my post-10K flop, and chuckled to myself. Oh, how naive I was back in June. A sub-two hour half. Very LOLz worthy.

So, I trained. I actually kept up with 3 or 4 days of running per week. With 3 or 4 weeks to go, I started notching 20+ miles a week again for the first time in over a year. I ran an 11-mile peak run. I even dragged myself out with a cold to make sure I had my 10-miler in last week, so that I had one more long run and more miles on my legs.

But secretly, I knew. All the miles and the spin classes and the core strengthening was merely to hang on, not to PR. The tempo runs, the lead-in-my-legs run was all for the goal of "finishing", which for my  6th (7th? I'm losing track) half marathon, is a pretty paltry goal.

But every time I hit the split time button on my watch, it was another pancake mile behind me. Flat as Ohio. The biggest hill I ran around the Charles was the JFK Bridge near the Harvard boathouse. And THIS is the elevation profile for the BAA Half Marathon:

Maybe you didn't notice THIS:

My glutes and quads just started weeping from the PTSD.
At the information session that the BAA held back in August about the half, some unsuspecting lass asked what the "Heartbreak Hill" was for the half. I scoffed at her question, for two reasons: 1. Heartbreak Hill is so humbling because of where it falls in the race (mile 20) not because you're scaling Everest. In a half marathon, there is no "wall" because you never deplete your glycogen enough. So there is no Heartbreak. 2. THE WHOLE FUCKING COURSE IS HEARTBREAK HILL.

It was a beautiful race day. Fifty degrees, just a little breeze, sunny. The 11.5 to the 20K mark was through the zoo, so I saw some camels and something that kind of looked like Pumba from the Lion King. There was gorgeous foliage around the JP Pond, and spectators throughout the majority of the course.

There were these awful banking curves, unkept paths, and a short section on a trail that everyone slowed down on.

And there was pain. So. Much. Pain.

I know I whine a lot about courses. I've run the Quincy Half twice, and each time I finish, I vow to never run it agin, because of all of the hills. This year was no exception. But, when I ran Quincy this past May, I was completely undertrained (I had peaked back in March, and then the race was postponed due to a blizzard THANKS, NEW ENGLAND). While Quincy is hilly, it's not ruthless. There are shorter, steep hills, but nothing as soul-sucking as rolling hills for 13 miles. The pain I felt in Quincy was lack of miles on my legs.

The pain I felt yesterday was due to pure torture. I had to keep reminding myself that I was prepared for this. That I trained for this. That I was ready for this, even though my hips and glutes were exploding. The hills were ruthless. The bar has been set; all other courses will now be compared to the BAA Half (and they will all probably look like lovely skips through flowery fields).

In the end, the training really did pay off. Regardless of the evil, demoralizing course, I shaved 2 minutes off of my 2013 Quincy time to finish in 2:14:16. Not my sub-two hour goal I was looking for; but I finished - which doesn't seem as paltry now.