Lost files, Vol. V: Sham Rocked I
Early morning before the Shamrock Half in 2007. That was also the first year of the Daylight Saving Time change in March, so this felt really early.
Out of my 6 Shamrock Half Marathons, the one I remember the most is my first one. There were snow flurries the day before; race day was frigid.
I looked up old weather data today to see what it actually was — the overnight low was a record at 28. That’s 10 degrees colder than this past weekend’s “cold” race.
I debated on whether to run short sleeves or long, two layers or one. I ended up taking a short sleeve layer and putting it under my long sleeve shirt and wore two layers. I wore my gloves the whole race.
Until now, though, the only record of that race that anyone could find is in the archives of the races times on the Shamrock site. I had a post on my myspace for a while, but eventually took that down.
I saved those files, though, and today I give you my first Shamrock Half Marathon race report. It’s about as brief as my post was from this past weekend.
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Originally posted Tuesday, March 20, 2007, titled “Simply put, it’s rewarding”
I’ve said this before after finishing a long race — it’s hard to put into words what it’s like when you’re done.
Physically, when you can’t hardly walk later in the day is when you know you’ve pushed yourself as hard as you can.
On Sunday, that was the case. But it wasn’t painful.
After the 10 miler last year (The Lost Files Vol. IV), I was in pain from my knee. This weekend’s race felt, and still feels, rewarding. All those mornings of getting up and running in the cold certainly paid off.
Mentally, it’s grueling to run that far with a time in mind that you want to beat. I went in with a goal not really set in stone, but as I began running, I realized more and more how I wanted to beat 1:45.
The first couple of miles were the slowest mainly because of the mass amount of people running the race. But once I had room, I let my mind settle down and took everything one mile at a time. When I got to the halfway point, I knew that all I needed were six solid 8 minute miles.
Sooo, long story short, my chip time (that’s the time from when I crossed the start line to when I finished) was 37 seconds faster than 1:45.
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That’s it. That’s all I had to say. It wasn’t long after that when I signed up for the Richmond Marathon and began this blog.
It’s been a long time coming, but now I finally have a recap of some sorts from all my Shamrock Half Marathons:
2007 - Lost files, Vol. V: Sham Rocked I, 1:44.23
2008 - Sham Rocked II, 1:49.07
2009 - Sham Rocked III, 1:49.30
2010 - Sham Rocked IV, 1:42.52
2012 - Sham Rocked V, 1:40.48
2013 - Sham Rocked VI, 1:49.32
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Almost forgot what you looked liked without the beard. Also, you look stoned.
Very cool look back at this race series. So far I haven’t repeated many races - and ones I ran a long time ago were pre-blog so other than a time on athlinks and a few pictures, there’s really nothing out there about how the races went for me. I’m going to repeat my first 25k in May. It should be a three-peat, but I was in a boot last year (that got it’s own blog post, too) and since I’m treating it as a training run for my “A” race 2 weeks later, I’m really struggling with how to approach it.
Great job on 6 years of Shamrock races - may next year be lucky 7 for you
That’s awesome you have all those years recorded like that. I hope I write Madison Mini recaps until the end of time.