After months of insufferable heat in Raleigh, with the effective temperature regularly resting between 110 and 120 degrees, although I continued to run consistently, my pace understandably drastically slowed and I pursued hardly any longer runs; thus, when I registered for the infamously hilly Run for Green Half Marathon in Davidson, North Carolina, taking place on September 30, 2023, last minute, I had no intention of running fast, especially having just recovered from a cold, and casually viewed the event as a training run for hopefully a bigger race soon.

PC: Run for Green

As typical, I did not manage sufficient sleep after driving 2.5 hours the day before, and the race commenced hotter than I predicted, with my body beginning to sweat profusely early on. I tried hard to run slowly for the first several miles but accidentally outpaced myself, likely due to the initial downhill. The course comprised rolling hills, some extreme, from start to finish with hardly any flat, and toward the end, when I saw my running uphill felt barely faster than walking, I chose the latter to conserve energy and to pick up running again when the hills subsided. When I saw how slowly I was moving, I lost any desire to keep pushing to make up ground.

No excuses, but in retrospect, following the summer of almost entirely shorter and slower runs, coming back to a half marathon with this many giant hills may not have been the wisest. My fitness, whether due to insufficient training or my not being the best hill runner in general, was missing while my legs do not even feel like they ran, with zero soreness. I went into the event conservatively giving myself just over two hours to finish, so this embarrassing time of 2:21:53, exacerbated by the course stretching well over 13.1 miles, as my COROS reads 13.38, humbled me. I am still confident I would have easily run a sub-two-hour half marathon had this course been flatter or the weather been 10 degrees cooler, as I would not have walked, and hopefully I will be able to prove that to myself shortly. Regardless of the result, I am thrilled to be racing again.