Palos Verde Half-Marathon

A group from Southern Cal Walkers and L.A. Roadrunners and L.A. Leggers decided racewalk the Palos Verde half-marathon and it was great fun. I decided not to hang out with the group and socialize so I took off early. By mile 5 John Magnussen caught up with me but he confessed that he ran to catch up. We helped each other and kept trading leads. His goal was 2:35 and I was hoping to do better than 2:30. By the turn around we were at 1:16 so I was close to my pace. The Polar RS800sd seemed to agree with the halfway mark but was off at the finish--probably because of that big downhill where I spent way too much time in the air.

Finishing time? I marked it at 2:31:20 (no chips on this race) but according to John the "official" time was 2:30:51. I'll update this post when the results are posted. However, 13.1 miles or 21.1 kilometers at 2:31 gives me an average pace of 11:31 min/mile or 7:09 min/km, that's almost a 5-hour marathon pace and is still better than the 12 min/mile I was shooting for as my marathon pace a while back. Of course the question is if I can hold that pace for twice as long as today. It was a tough course, just check out this chart.



That hill at mile 2 was too steep to racewalk up or down so we all took "running breaks" to get through it. It was all in fun and there were no judges. We all finished and it was great fun. Afterwards we went to Ports O'Call in San Pedro for a hearty brunch.