Palm Coast Half Marathon Recap

Last Sunday, I ran the inaugural Palm Coast Half Marathon. Going into this race, I was not feeling good. I was actually dreading this race because I have had outer knee pain for the last 3-4 weeks any time I run longer than about 30 minutes. After that, the pain starts slowing creeping up on the hurt scale. Pretty sure it is IT Band related, as I have all the classic symptoms. Anyways, I did a lot of icing and foam rolling in the week leading up to the race.

I must say, for an inaugural event, this was very well organized so kudos to the people that made it happen. Parking was clearly marked and they had people to direct us to proper parking spaces. 
The race had about 400 participants, with about half doing the 1/2 marathon and the other half doing the 5K. 

Start time for the half marathon people was 8am and it was about 35 degrees at the start. Definitely the coldest I've ever run a race in! 

The course itself was quite scenic and I really enjoyed it. We crossed a 55ft high bridge going over to the 6 mile loop on the beachside area that wound through oak tree covered roads. Then it was back across the bridge around mile 7 and around a loop that followed the river and wound through a park in the woods. Aid stations were every 2 miles or so and the volunteers were all loud and cheerful, which is always appreciated!

I ran the first half conservatively, as I wanted to see what my IT band would do. It started to hurt around mile 4, but never got any worse so I ran through it and eventually sped up for the last half of the race. I was neck and neck with this kid that was maybe 12-13 years old for the last 4 miles or so of the race. I think he is going to be a speedster once he reaches high school for sure! We kept leapfrogging each other and I kept pointing out his mom that was about 1/4 mile in front of him and telling him "Are you gonna let your mom beat you???" LOL :) It did get him more motivated because he was starting to slow down. Oh and I ended up leaving him in my dust in the last half mile or so. Yes, I'm a jerk and didn't let the kid beat me...haha :D

Anyways, I crossed the finish line and saw my time: 1:44:45. I was incredibly happy that a race I was dreading ended turning into a PR. And a big PR at that. I demolished my old PR of 1:51:30 and I even beat my 2011 half marathon goal time of 1:45. I guess I need to revise that now!

After I stopped running, the pain in the outside of my knee got worse for the rest of the day and into the next day. So I'm going to take a 2 week break from running to let my IT band calm down and hopefully be able to run pain-free again.

My splits:
08:03, 08:08, 07:59, 08:00, 08:08, 07:52, 07:54, 07:56, 07:57, 07:58, 08:00, 07:52, 07:51, 06:42(.15mi)

Summary    01:44:45    13.15mi    07:57 Pace And the course: