Geoduck Gallop Half Marathon - 2016

I started off the new year doing something completely new, something I never really considered doing until about seven weeks ago: working with a part-time coach. I've never had any set structure to my running and doing one or two up-tempo runs a month is all the speed work I've ever done.

For January I did two workouts a week (thanks Ethan for keeping me company on a number of them) and while my body has needed some adjusting, it has been refreshing to do something new and hopefully be stronger for late-spring and summer objectives. 

On Saturday the Geoduck Gallop Half was my first real test of how the training has been going. My previous half PR at Boundary Bay was on a pancake flat course that seems to always be into a headwind on the way out and downwind on the way back. The Geoduck course was hillier than I expected (~515' gain), so even though I was a minute or so off where I wanted to be the effort level felt harder than my previous half races and I snagged a 12 second PR (1:29:48). Being a small race that worked out to 5th male (6th overall), while Ethan torched the course in 1:14:47 for the win. Nice.

Now it's time to hopefully start targeting more strength-building workouts with an eye toward the mountains...