I ran the Georgetown Half Marathon this morning along the C&O Canal Towpath, the third and final C&O Canal Towpath race I’m doing this year.

I registered for the Georgetown Half back in March, after my poor performance in the Washington Rock ‘n Roll Marathon. It was after registering for the Georgetown Half that I learned about the September and October marathons I ran, so in a sense today felt like closing a chapter I had started in the spring.

It was a beautiful morning for a run along the towpath. We started at 9am, all 400+ runners at once, and that meant the first 2-3 miles were very crowded. As runners started to break out into different pace groups, I found another guy who was at an aggressive but steady pace and we ended up running together for essentially the entire 13.1 miles.

Georgetown Half Marathon was a record for me, both in terms of time for a half marathon and in terms of overall pace for a distance run. I finished at 1 hour, 40 minutes at a 7:36 pace.

Before this morning, I had only run one other half marathon—a trail half marathon eight years ago in Philadelphia’s Pennypack Park.