queens half

So 1:35:12 (1:35:25 “gun”) at the Queens half-marathon this morning … 7:16 pace. Better than my 1:35:54 in Brooklyn, but I have to admit I’m not that happy as two of the Flyers I beat in Brooklyn trounced me today. One of them, a guy from N.J. I have beaten four times this year (I think twice from behind), passed me around the four-mile mark. “Hey, I’m faster than him,” I said to myself, “I’ll catch him later.” However he ended up beating me by almost two minutes.

I was not running the negative splits I did in Brooklyn and probably slowed down a little in the last two miles, but not by that much.

However, this guy with the Polish Running Club I had been trading places with through the race eventually passed me with less than half a mile to go. I kept him in sight and tried to nip him at the finish, as some guy did to me last weekend, but that wasn’t to be. He beat me by three seconds, and ended up scoring for his team. Odd but true: if I had caught him and pushed him back to the 300th place, instead of 299, PRC would have finished tied for ninth with the Harriers. Instead they took ninth outright, 574 to 575. (Scoring is decided by adding the places of the top five runners … lower is better, obviously). It doesn’t affect the club points standings though, because the two teams race in different divisions.

Anyway …gotta start training harder.