Race Report: 2025 Jackson Hole Half Marathon

2025-05-25T14:30:00-06:00

This will be a short one: I just raced this year’s edition of the Jackson Hole Half Marathon, the first of the three half marathons organized in Jackson Hole every year (the other two being the Grand Teton Half Marathon in June and the Hole Half in September).

Of these three half marathons, this one is usually the smallest, with only 166 runners this year—less than a tenth of the size of the much-bigger Grand Teton Half Marathon. And yet, for some reason it feels like the most competitive of the three—I’ve podiumed at the Grand Teton Half Marathon every time I’ve done it, but have never come even remotely close at this race (I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect this one is simply composed mostly of locals who are acclimated to the altitude). In any case, this race always feels deceivingly challenging, although I planned to take it easy, and run it at a conservative pace in place of my weekly long run in my training plan.

The route for this race starts just outside Teton Village and heads south on the Moose-Wilson Road towards Wilson. After crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Snake River, it continues on the community pathway along Wyoming Highway 22. Then, it takes the Tribal Trail Road, loops around Colter Elementary School, and continues on the pathway along Flat Creek and Russ Garaman Park (one of my favorite places to run in Jackson) before heading on Snow King Avenue towards the finish line at Phil Baux Park, at the base of the Snow King Mountain Resort. It’s a very pleasant route, mostly downhill until the last 4 km, with just 67 m of elevation gain. They also had aid stations stocked with water and Gatorade roughly every 5 km. You won’t get much of a view, though—you’re running away from the Tetons the entire time.

View this course in Garmin Connect or Strava.

Kate dropped me off at the start line in the Teton Village at around 6:40 AM, twenty minutes before the start of the race. It was a chilly 2.2°C, but with much-welcome clear skies after a couple weeks of almost non-stop rain and storms, so I spent a few minutes warming up with some leg swings and light jogging, and ate a Maurten Gel 160 before getting in line for the start. It wasn’t very crowded, given the small size of the field, so I put myself near the front, even though, again, my plan was to take it easy and treat this as my long run for the week.

That plan lasted approximately… three seconds after the race started. Maybe it was just the slight downhill grade of this portion of the race, or the rest day I took the day before, or maybe I was just being a competitive ass, but my legs felt good, and I quickly found myself at the front of the race—as far as I could tell, there were only about five people in front of me. Well, maybe this would be the day I would finally podium on this race, so I said fuck it, and went for it.

I went hard. My pace for the first 10 km or so was 4:24/km, slightly faster than my running threshold pace, according to Garmin Connect. I felt pretty great until then, but then quickly started to struggle—there are a couple of punchy climbs on the community pathway after crossing the WY-22 highway that knocked the wind out of me, and my pace started to slow down. I had a Maurten Gel 100 Caf 100 at around the halfway point of the race, hoping to get a little boost. I wish I had timed it better; by the 16 km mark I was suffering again, and I was all out of gels. I could feel myself fading in the slight grade of the last 4 km and got passed by two or three people, but I gave it everything I had left in the last kilometer and crossed the finish line with an official time of 1:36:43, and a pace of 4:35/km.

It’s my fastest half marathon to date, but I was even more surprised when I looked at the results and found out that not only had I podiumed, I finished first in the M40–49 age group, and eighth overall. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Yee-haw.

Not gonna lie, this feels pretty good. In 2017, I ran the Army Ten-Miler in DC, one of my first races, and at the time, my longest one. It was awful—it took me 2:16 to finish, and I probably walked half of it. Today, I got a PR in the ten-mile distance of 1:11:48; it’s wild to me that I’ve shaved over an hour off of that time since then. I’m getting older now and I’ve had some setbacks with my running training this year, so it’s very heartening to think that… maybe my fastest days aren’t behind me just yet.

Race Report: 2022 Jackson Hole Half Marathon

2022-07-02T17:00:00-06:00

Today I raced in my second B race this year, the Jackson Hole Half Marathon, as part of my prep for Ironman 70.3 Arizona in October. I went in with a few goals:

Test my nutrition strategy.
Test how the pace suggested by Stryd felt.
See if I could actually pace myself properly.

Timewise, I didn’t have any specific goals. Anything under two hours would have been fine, with 1:45 as a stretch goal.

The race started at 8:00 AM on the dot on the bike path just north of Teton Village. I started way at the back because I was trying to stay socially distant, so I was stuck behind everybody for the first couple of kilometers, but after passing that initial group, I ran by myself most of the way. The course followed the multi-use pathway downhill until the Stilson Lot, then turned west towards Wilson for about a kilometer before turning around and heading through Rendezvous Park. After crossing the bridge over the Snake River, it continued on the pathway alongside highway 22 before turning on Tribal Trail Road towards the finish line at Colter Elementary. However, the course wasn’t exactly 21.1 km, with my GPS reporting 20.42 km.

For nutrition, I relied on Maurten gels since it’s what they provide on Ironman courses, using their recommended fueling guide for half marathons as a starting point. Instead of using their drink mix, I had a Maurten Caf gel 15 minutes before race start, then a regular gel at kilometers 5 and 10, and one more Maurten Caf at around kilometer 16 (which gave me a pretty good boost at the end, they’re really caffeinated). I started feeling some slight stomach cramps around kilometer 8, but they went away quickly after having some water at the aid stations. Other than that, I had no GI issues, and ended the race feeling strong.

The Stryd app suggested I hit a target power of 230 W for this race, with a projected time of around 1:51, and I did my best to hit that target. To help with that, I set up my watch to auto-lap every 1 km, and set the data fields to average 3-second power, heart rate, and average power and pace for the entire workout and for the current lap; that way I could shoot for target power for each lap and adjust on the next one if I missed it. In the end, I nailed it, ending up with an average power of exactly 230 W and a finishing time of 1:46:38. At my average pace of 5:13/km, it would have taken me about 1:50 to do the actual half marathon distance, almost spot on what Stryd predicted. It felt like the right amount of effort; I’m not sure I would have been able to sustain a faster pace. Good job, Stryd.

Me, arriving at the finish line. Credit: Jackson Hole Half Marathon

With that total time of 1:46:38, I finished 8th in my age group (male 30-39) and 26th overall.

Although I didn’t hit my stretch goal, I’m pretty happy with this result, considering it’s my first half marathon ever, and also because check out how cool the finisher medal is:

As for my initial goals:

I seem to be able to easily stomach multiple Maurten gels without any GI issues. They're… not cheap, but they’re worth it.
Stryd’s suggested pace seems to work very well. I’m not sure if I’d have been able to hit that pace after the swim and bike legs, though, so I’ll probably need to account for that for Arizona.
My pacing strategy worked, I was able to hit my targets perfectly. Can I do the same for the bike?

Next up, let’s see if I can shave off a few minutes from my run at the Hole Half in September, my last race before heading to Arizona.

Given to Tri: Jackson Hole Half Marathon

Race Report: 2025 Jackson Hole Half Marathon

Race Report: 2022 Jackson Hole Half Marathon