Jordan Desilets – "Time Waits For No One"

What a nice weekend on the 12th. I went down to Ft. Lauderdale for the RRM conference. Always a nice get away as I was able to sit on the beach and swim in 80 degree weather while everyone else in Michigan was experiencing the first snow…don’t hate Work was good and it was nice getting some relaxing time with the wife.

I needed to do a long run while I was down there and not knowing the area I began to look for road races and the 13.1 is what I found. So this was cool…I had never run a half before and I wanted an official time. I didn’t really care what the time was as long as I could finally say “My time is blah” but then I started looking at the results from the past year, as we all do, and then I fond the course record of 72:40 (5:33 pace.) I had just finished up a 10 miler at 5:24 pace so I thought here is one more goal I can accomplish while I’m down here.

I sent in my running resume and was able to bypass the $85 reg. fee. but I still had to go through Active.com which pained me being that I run a competing website “RunSignUp”.

Two worst things about the race was I had to get up at 4:00am for the 6:15 start and there was a 15-20 mph head wind for 7 miles…now for the fun stuff.

As the news paper described it “It was a brisk 69 degrees” so I was warming up in just a racing singlet and shorts. The race director called me out at the start line and was asking me for my prediction which I just shrugged and said we will see.

Runners take your mark…everyone moved and boxed me out pushing me back to the second row…that is so annoying. As usual we start at a blistering 4:30 mile pace eventually slowing to a 5:10 for the first mile, I sit in 10th place. These guys continue to hammer the pace through the second mile dropping a 5:04. Now I want to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the half marathon just as much as the next guy but I was in realty knowing I’m not in that good of shape, so I slowed down and dropped a 5:34 Mile. Weird…I still ended up in 2nd place after that mile. I made a small push over the fourth mile at 5:18 catching up to 1st place where we ran together for about 200 meters then he just slowed way down as I hit my fifth mile in 5:20 and was on my own for the rest of the race. 5:10, 5:04, 5:34, 5:18, 5:20, 5:24, 5:35, 5:25, 5:08, 5:23, 5:05, 5:17, 5:17.

Ready to be done with this at the 11th mile and tried to push a little harder to get it over with in a time of 69:34 smashing the course record by 3:06 and beating 2nd place by almost 4 minutes.

All in all it was a fun experience and I couldn’t ask for a better first half marathon. In Detroit I may be the slowest ever but down there I was the fastest ever and I am still amazed how a beer can make your legs feel so much better after a hard run like that.

Well what a fun weekend it was. Starting on Thursday I had my best 16x400M workout averaging 68.5ish. Friday was a nice and relaxing 6 miles. Then I jumped out for a recovery 15 miles with Corey on Saturday

Just to come back Sunday for the Big Heart Big House run in Ann Arbor. It was such a fun time!

I ran with Josh Perrin and Brandon Bethke for the first three miles of the 10K. Then Josh began to drop off the back. I think he knew no one else was going to catch him so he had 3rd place wrapped up and was going to come back in the 5K and go for the win in that…which he did I held on with Bethke for about another mile but I could feel him eager to go and at about the 4th mile he went. He ended up taking the win in 30:39 and slid into second with 31:25 only 10 seconds off of my goal, DAMN YOU BIG HILL!
The finish line was great with the whole crew from MRSPT hanging out there. Also my lovely wife and good friends The Syrkowskis. I don’t think you realize how big the Big House is until you have to climb those stairs on the way out