Quarry Turkey

It’s back to Quarry Lakes for Brazen’s Quarry Turkey half marathon.  This is where they held this spring’s Bay Breeze, which was my second race of the year, as well as of my now-rather-regular series of races.  It’s also my first time running half marathons two weekends in a row.  Last week’s Berkeley Half took a decent amount out of me, and I was still loosening up a bit from it.  And having run two races rather hard in a row, I decided to slow down on this one a bit.

Since the course is the same as Bay Breeze (but Bay Breeze is usually elsewhere. I hear it’s normally somewhere close to the bay.  Close enough to feel the breeze.), I’ve seen parts of the course before.  Since I’ve upped my baseline run to half marathons, the out and back portion was significantly longer, but running along the arroyo made for a rather pretty suburban course.  I started a little bit fast, and backed off pretty quickly to a pace that was a minute per mile slower than the prior week.  And I held that for most of the course, speeding up a bit for the middle section and again for the last mile.  

The aid stations had pie!  I had to say no a lot.  Lots of bread-and-sugar-like-carbs don’t mix well with flat courses for me.  But it was enthusiastically offered again and again and again.

Quarry Lakes is a collection of…quarry lakes.  The immediate landscape reminds me of Gilboa quarry, where I was known to hang out many years ago when scuba was what kept me busy.  And it was a fun flat run, with a handful of small hills and dips.  And the giant turkey was happily hanging out with everyone.  I finished in 2:!2:07, 13 mins longer than last week, but 3 mins faster than my target time.

I usually don’t run this distance two weekends in a row, but this was good prep for the two-half-marathon-in-5-days thing coming up at the end of the year, which, unlike this course, will have some hills.  As well as for the progressively longer races coming up into the early spring.