The Hudepohl 14k was held on September 22, 2018. This is a 14 km (8.67 mile) race that circles downtown Cincinnati.
Training and Lead-up
I have been training for a half marathon later in the fall, and have not done any race-specific training for this. My lead-up week to this was 8 hill repeats on Monday, recovery 3 mile + 7 strides on Tuesday and Thursday, 30 minute tempo on Wednesday, and a 3 mile easy fitness run on Friday.
Race Day
The humid Cincinnati weather broke for some very nice race day weather. I had been distracted all week, so I didn’t go into this with any sort of plan. I lined up close to the front and was off.
Miles 1-2 are the toughest and are mostly uphill. I kept with the crowd and looked at my watch when it beeped for the miles. After seeing the first two – 7:33 and 7:47, I wasn’t sure if I could hold up but I was off to a good start and felt good.
Miles 3-5 still felt good, and borderline great. Mile 4 has a hairpin and as I went on the backside of the hairpin so I could see the people that were trailing me, I looked for a few coworkers and didn’t see them. I knew I started ahead of them so this kept me going strong. Splits were 7:23, 7:36, and 7:11. Took Gatorade just past the mile 5 marker.
Miles 6-8.67 started feeling tough. This was a net downhill and the pack had thinned out, so I was trying to stay near others because the cops were letting drivers cut through gaps. The 7k rejoined us around mile 7.75 and mostly stayed to one side, through West Pete Rose Way, I kept to the left (most of the walkers stayed to the right), and once the race got to the final stretch on Mehring Way, course monitors were telling 7k walkers to stay to the left and 14k runners to stay to the right… so we had an express lane to the finish. Splits of 7:18, 7:33, 7:32, and 4:58 (0.67 miles, pace was 7:24 min/mile).
Overall time of 1:04:51, which is a pace of 7:28 minutes per mile. This is the fastest long race for me, and my first race as a 40-year-old. I placed 13/99 in my age group, 113/874 among all males, and 142 overall. Nice!
