End Of The Road Half Marathon is held on an abandoned section of the PA Turnpike. Its defining characteristic is that you travel through a pair of tunnels twice during the out-and-back course. And these are long tunnels, too. You’re underground for about 5 miles total during the race, which is why all runners need to have a headlamp with them. They had some small battery powered candle lights in them to provide some depth perception, but they were definitely not enough to run by. There were enough gentle hills that I wouldn’t call this a PR course. You should think of this more as a fun race than as something to be overly serious about. There were about 300 runners in the Saturday event and not quite 200 hundred runners in the Sunday version.
I went into the event with a “long run” mentality without any kind of serious expectations. The plan was to start easy and see where things took me. They had a couple pace signs set up and my 9 minute pace estimate had me at the very front of the field. There was a countdown and we were off. I managed to clock a couple sub-9 miles and thoughts of a potential PR (8:30 average pace) entered my head. I was definitely running easy and was passed steadily for the first mile. I then passed other runners for the next 3-4 miles before losing some of those places back right before the turnaround. I definitely wasn’t racing anyone so this didn’t stress me out. I still felt fine through here.
I hit the turnaround at 56.5 minutes or about 1 minute off my PR. Hmmmm. . . There was quite a bit of climbing on the way out so maybe, just maybe, I could claw that back on my return trip. Miles 7 and 8 were a bit quicker and my hope started to grow like the Grinch’s heart. At mile 10, I did some math and figured out I was close enough that I should start pushing. At mile 11, I started going a bit harder. The last mile and change was pretty much max effort. And then I was across the finish line with a time of 1:50:57 or 29 seconds faster than I’ve ever run a half marathon.
Some Context On The PR
The half marathon distance is a soft PR for me as it’s not an event I’ve raced much. Heck, I’ve managed to split 1:45/1:47 halfs in the same marathon. Here’s my history at the distance:
- 2012 (age 40) – 1:51:26 – first real training block (20 weeks)
- 2014 (age 42) – 1:51:42 – mostly a training run, miles 8-20 on the day
- 2025 (age 53) – 1:50:57 – 6 days after a hundred mile race
There’s a bunch of different takeaways you can walk away with if you so choose. I find it humorous that I’ve raced the distance on three separate occasions and basically get the same time on each. I’m proud that I’ve been running this distance for 13 years now and I haven’t slowed down. And I’m blown away that I can do this at the drop of the hat. It’s a testament to what you can accomplish if you consistently put in the work day in and day out for years at a time. When you love running long as much as I do, it doesn’t take any motivation to get your miles in.
It also doesn’t hurt to have a distance you can post a PR whenever you want. Speaking of which, anyone know a good 10K?
