Lessons from My First Half Marathon in Five and a Half Years

Why my slowest competitive 13.1-miler was also one of my best.

On January 11, 2020, I ran a half marathon in Irvine, California, and I did very well. I’d been training prodigiously for a 100K trail ultra that was then five weeks away, and those long, hard miles set me up nicely for the half, which I completed in 1:15:31—my best time in eleven years, and good enough for 2^nd place.

Little did I know that more than five years would pass before I was healthy enough to attempt another half marathon, an unhappy sabbatical forced upon me by long COVID, which is pretty much the last nonfatal disease you want to get if you’re an endurance athlete. But I’m happy to say that sabbatical ended last Sunday at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in San Diego, which I finished in 176^th place with a time of 1:23:26, my slowest time ever in a competitive half marathon.

Now, you might look at that result and think, Poor fellow. He’s a shadow of the runner he used to be! If you do, you’re right—I am a shadow of the runner I used to be. But you know what? I don’t care! Because I’m also a better runner than I used to be in the ways that matter.

Mastery is not just schtick for me. It’s a personal quest. As an athlete, I strive to run the perfect race. I want to train and compete in a way that allows me to look back at a completed ace and say, “There’s nothing I might have done differently that would have gotten me to the finish line any faster.”

Is it even possible to run a perfect race? Who knows? All I know is that the longer I keep at it, the closer I get. My times aren’t what they used to be, but I’m still improving. Perfect races don’t come from being young, healthy, and gifted; they come from making the most of what you have by racing intelligently and courageously. I’ve run fast races and been disappointed in myself because I made tactical errors or failed to leave it all out there, and I’ve run slow races and been proud because I competed as the best version of myself, smart and brave.

This might sound nuts, but there’s a part of me that’s glad I’m dealing with chronic illness as an athlete. After 43 years of running, I’m close enough to mastery that I relish fighting with one arm tied behind me back. As I’ve written before in this space, when I stayed up late on New Year’s Eve 2023 to sign up for the Javelina Jundred 100K, I gave myself a 10 percent chance of making it to the start line, too sick to run a single step and having not run my last cautious attempt to ease back into a little light jogging 11 months earlier plunged me into an abyss of bodily malaise that took me the better part of a year to climb out of. The Matt who not only made it to the start line but finished 17^th at Javelina was smarter and braver than the younger, healthier Matt who probably would have won the race. And stronger. My former self would have quit had he faced the challenges long COVID threw at my current self.

Like most runners, my former self judged his races based on outcomes, but I’m way past that now. All I care about is how well I control the only things I can control as an athlete: effort (how hard I try), attitude (whether I stay positive), and judgment (the quality of my decisions). And I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at these things. Before I left for San Diego, I told a Dream Runner, “I’m going to run a great race,” and I believed it, knowing I had total control of the determinants of real success. Bad weather might slow me down, and my body might not cooperate, but I gave no thought to these uncertainties. The power to run a great race lay squarely within me.

The first part of executing a great race is setting the right goal. My stated goal for Rock ‘n’ Roll was to finish under 1:25:00. My true goal, as in every race, was to finish in the least time possible. But I needed a number to start with, and the number that seemed right based on my recent training was 6:28 per mile. I was 80 percent confident I could hold this pace for the full distance, so my plan was to run the first mile in 6:28, assess, and adjust as needed. As it turned out, I spent the whole first mile weaving around runners who started ahead of me, so I just ran by effort and ended up splitting 6:22 for mile 1.

Long story short, I averaged 6:21 for the race as a whole. Talk about nailing it! My slowest mile was a 6:32 in mile 3, which featured 82 feet of elevation gain, my fastest a 6:10 in mile 12, which dropped 161 feet. I ran hard enough that my answer to the all-important question “Can I keep this up” was a continuous “Maybe,” which is the correct answer according to Chris Boardman, who once held the world record for the one-hour time trial in cycling.

When I review the race in my mind, I can’t find a single error or lapse that cost me time. In fact, I was this close to giving myself an A+ for execution when I looked at the results for the men’s 50-54 age division and discovered I’d been beaten by a fellow named Rene Rojas Garcias, who was 8 seconds behind me at 5K and 82 seconds ahead of me at the finish. So, I guess the lesson of my first half marathon in five and a half years is that, no matter how close you get to mastering your sport, there’s always someone there to remind you how far you have to go. And that’s a good thing.