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Team Member: Nicholas Sykes

Race Name: Charleston Half-Marathon

Race Date: 1/14/12

Race Placement/Time/Qualification: 1:20:07 PR, 11th OA

Tell us about your race (limit 500 words)…: I don’t believe I wrote a race report for the Charleston Half-Marathon last year, but it was two weeks prior to my breakthrough marathon in Miami and had given me a great deal of confidence. I had “accidentally” set a half-marathon PR by 7 seconds in a time of 1:22:33 after a closing 5k of 18:55.

Going into this year’s race I had a similar goal of just running a steady tempo around what I hope to run in Boston 13 weeks from now (2:45 marathon pace). The night before the race I looked over last year’s splits and thought I might be able to squeak out another PR by a few seconds if I aimed to run every mile somewhere around 6:15.

At the start I took off and quickly found that I was a couple of yards in front… woops! I glanced at my watch and realized I was running 5:20 pace for the first quarter mile, so I focused on relaxing my shoulders, and slowly let everyone get back to me. I cruised through the first mile with the lead group in 5:53, a time that wouldn’t even be my fastest of the day!

After we made the turn at the Battery at the southern-most point of the course, most of that group began to separate from me but my second mile was a steady 6:03 and allowed a small group of 3 to join up with me. From there it was a long 8 mile stretch entirely into a headwind so we began taking turns in the front and allowed the others to draft behind us. After a 6:04 third mile we ratcheted up the pace to 5:59 for the 4th and dropped the weakest member of our clan.

For the 5th mile we threw down what would be my fastest of the race at 5:52 (29:52 after 5), and kept on the sub-6 pace with another 5:59 6th mile. That brought me through 10k in the second fastest time I’ve ever run, only behind my 36:02 PR from last March.

We had passed 2 from the front group by mile 8 when our group began to fall apart and I hit 10 miles in a stellar 1:00:12. If I ran anything close to the last 5k I had the year before I’d be well under 1:20! Unfortunately that had been after 10 weeks of marathon prep and off an easier pace, not the TWO weeks of training and 6:01 I was currently on!

I struggled a little bit over the last 3 miles but kept it together to close with 6:19, 6:20, and 6:12 before the extra part that I covered in 1:06. In theory that extra part should be .1 but my Garmin had it at .2 miles (.16 last year).

Nevertheless, I crossed the line in an official time of 1:20:07 for a HUGE PR! Overall, I ended up 11th in the half-marathon (of 2033) and 2nd in the 20-24 age group.