The Survivor Harbor 7 last year was a great experience.  The scenery of this run, for those that live in Baltimore, is beautiful.  You start out in Tide Point and make your way into and around Ft. McHenry.  The path that goes around the Fort is right on the water of the Chesapeake and has a beautiful breeze.  From there you run past Federal Hill and the Visionary Arts museum to make your way to the Inner Harbor.  After a slightly treacherous dash over some cobblestone you find yourself on the the promenade of the Inner Harbor.  This is one of the places for a great photo-op.  After running past the Aquarium and Pier 6 you make a quick run through Fells Point and end in the Canton.

This year I was really excited to run this race again.  So excited in fact I decided to try to recruit my brother to join me.  This would have been his first race longer than the Zoo Zoom in November, which is 5 miles.  Yes I said “would have been”.  Mike broke one of the cardinal rules of running.  Never eat anything the night before a race that you have never eaten before.  I headed to the race thinking I was going to be going it alone.

We got to the race with plenty of time to spare.  Dad and I sat on the tailgate of Element and watched the people stream by to get their packets and line up at the start.  The beginning of this race is announced by bag pipes, which I always found emotional even before we had a player at Pop’s funeral.

After about 2 1/2 miles I noticed a girl next to me was going about the same pace.  She struck up conversation and we ended up pacing each other for the rest of the race.  Her name was Meredith and I think she saved my time for the race overall.  She can be seen next to me in the pictures from the race.

In the end I ended up much slower than I was last year.  Here is a chart comparing my times:

I can say that the difference between last year and this year has shown me how much I have been slacking on my training when it comes to my runs.  I really want to set a PR at the Disneyland 1/2 in September, and at the rate I am going that is not going to happen.  Ideally I will run it in 2:20, which is a lofty goal with my current race pace.  To help reach my goal I have really stepped up my shorter runs and starting tomorrow I am integrating speed training whenever I can.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Health, Race Report, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.