It’s a new year and time for more racing! I usually don’t run many races in January, but this year I decided that it would be a good idea to get out of northern Utah for a few days to get some warm temperatures and clean air. Several of my friends ran the Painters Half Marathon in St. George, UT last year, and it looked like a race worth trying. What primarily drew my eyes to it are that it is a rolling loop course, it is USATF certified, and it has decent competition.
The fact that it is a loop course is important to me. In my humble opinion, there are way too races out here in Utah that are point-to-point downhill screamers. They all start up some mountain canyon and funnel you out to the city in the valley below, usually dropping 1000′ or more. Is it beautiful? Yes! Will it give you a meaningful time? No! And the relatively high elevation of these races (~5000′ above sea level) just complicates things even more. We Utah runners inevitably end up standing around after the race discussing what our time is really “worth“.
It was much simpler back in the flat, low lands in Indiana and Michigan, where I began racing as a high school and collegiate runner. A 15:30 5K was “worth”…15:30. My time was simply taken at face value (you are what you run), and I always had a good assessment of where I was really at in my training and racing. In Utah, a 15:30 5K could be “worth” anywhere from 15:10 (if you normalize to sea level level) to 16:30 (if the time came from a downhill course). It’s very confusing, and at times very unsatisfying. While it’s nice to witness the beauty of our surrounding mountain canyons during races, beat the high elevation, and get a fast time, ultimately I can never count my Utah PR’s as “real” PR’s. Perhaps if I had done 100% of my running out here I would feel differently, but all of the racing I did in the midwest while growing up has set my perspective.
So to summarize: Loop courses are good. They yield times that I can take a face value. Furthermore, getting down to a lower elevation is good for the same reason. And it’s all worthless without USATF certification and the security of a correct distance. The Painters Half provided all of these incentives with its certified, loop route that averages around 2600′ above sea level.
My wife and I were glad to leave the smog of Logan on Thursday morning. These red air days get really depressing after a while. We were rewarded to clean air and temperatures hovering near 60 in St. George. The trip was already worth it!
Race day morning was chilly, but perfect: sunny, upper 30’s, and no wind. Temperatures during the race climbed into the low 50s, and was quite suitable for shorts, singlet, and gloves. The half marathon had just over 1000 finishers, so it was a good size. Competition up front looked good; there were several guys who I knew could run near 1:10:00 or in the mid- to low-teens. I myself thought I could hit around 1:11 to 1:12, based on some recently workouts and my total training volume. I thought I had some chance of winning, but so did four other guys. Due to some tendon issues and setbacks, I had been scaling my weekly mileage back to the 40s, including a fair amount of elliptical cross training.
The race ended up going really well for me. We started with a pack of seven at the 2nd mile that drifted to a pack of four by the 5th mile, and a pack of two by the 7th mile. That pack of two included myself, and I felt strong and snappy through about Mile 9, but then the distance of the race wore on me and my pace slowed, from about 5:20/mile to 5:30/mile. My competitor, Jeff McClellan, did not slow whatsoever, and cruised to the victory with a time of 1:10:59. I chugged in with a 1:11:31, which I was count as both a “January PR” and a “post-A.S. PR”. And thankfully, I don’t have to figure out what the time is “worth”, since it is worth exactly what it is: 1:11:31. But this race gave me confidence that I can go under 1:09:00 and get a lifetime PR later this May in Indianapolis, provided I get in some good training.
I would do the Painters Half again. I thought it was fairly well-managed. The course had a lot of hills, but none were too steep or too long. It was not an extremely fast course, but it was not slow either. There were a lot of 90-degree turns, which slowed things down, and also threw off everyone’s GPS units (sharp turns really mess up the distance accuracy of Garmins…but that’s what certification is for), but other than that I liked the route a lot. It was not monotonous, and snaked its way through several different neighborhoods, bouncing on and off the local trail system. There were several very nice views, some cool red rock outcrops, and a bridge crossing over the Virgin River. The race started and finished at the Dixie Center, which featured a huge amount of easy parking and lots of bathrooms (very important!).
Good times, and perhaps I’ll be back.
A couple months ago I read a 
