Molli & Denny—good job on the Columbus half! Glad the weather held out for you.
Jen—way to go on the race! Great pics! How cute that your DD ran out to finish the race with you.
Christa—great race report! Glad you had such a good time with your sister. I almost laughed out loud about the guy with the baby stroller who dumped his kid out on the curb. It’s not funny, but it’s one of those things you just shouldn’t laugh at but can’t help.
Well, my half marathon “training run” went pretty well this morning. When I signed up last night and the lady gave me my race number, I was a little concerned that the number was #175. Sounded like a pretty small race and those things are notorious for having really fast runners. Then she told me that only 80 of those people were doing the half marathon, the rest were doing the 5K. Great, I feel even better now.
I woke up this morning to rain and wind and mid-30’s temps. Put on tights, a LS shirt and my new sleeveless windbreaker (which I LOVE, by the way). I brought my gloves and fleece hat, but ended up buying a technical running hat at the running store before the start (the best purchase I’ve made in a long time—running in the rain with one of those hats actually makes the run bearable). So I’m standing in line for the port-o-let and talking to the guy in front of me about the race. I told him I was going to take it easy and just do it as a training run and that I hoped that I wouldn’t be dead last as I was assuming everyone who dragged themselves out in this rain would be pretty serious and definitely fast. He said he was just going to use it as a training run, too, and he probably wouldn’t push past a 7:30 per mile pace or so. Excuse me?? 7:30? Ok, buddy, you’re in a completely different league than me if that’s your half marathon “training pace.” Needless to say, I still figured at this point that I would be dead last and was trying to mentally prepare myself for that.
All 80 of us lined up in the middle of Main Street right at 8:00, and the sheriff cleared the traffic on both ends of the stretch, the race director actually said “On your mark, get set, GO!” and we were off. It was actually a lot of fun. I had never run a “small time” half marathon like this, and it had a really intimate feel to it. By mile 1, we had all spaced out into our various paces, and I was happy to see that the entire field hadn’t blown by me at their “training pace” of 7:30 miles. I was definitely in the back third of the pack, but I didn’t have the last police cruiser tailing me allowing traffic to flow behind him. The entire second half of the race was on the Loveland bike trail, which is a pretty famous bike trail that actually runs from Cincinnati to near Cleveland. The only bad part about running on this trail is that it is very straight and flat, so it can be a bit boring.
I did see something pretty neat during the race. There was a guy running about my same pace pushing a running stroller with his two children in it. He had wrapped a plastic cover/screen around the stroller to keep everything dry, and he would stop every so often to make sure his kids were doing ok. At one point, he stopped along the side of the road, pulled out a bag of pretzels from the bag pocket, opened up the screen and said, "ok, who's ready for some pretzels" to which his son replied happily, "Me dad! I'm ready for some pretzels!" I thought that was pretty cute.
It rained the entire race, but I was ok with that. I figured it was good practice for preparing for nasty race weather, especially if things aren’t perfect in three weeks for the Flying Pig. The hat did help a lot. I may start wearing it for regular “good weather” races since those things really are pretty vented.
Crossed the finish line in 2:09 and I was completely fine with that. I grabbed some bagels and free Clif stuff from the post-race setup (no finisher’s medal, but I didn’t expect one based on the size of the race), threw the stuff in my car, and headed back out onto the bike trail for an additional 2 ½ miles. So when all was complete, I finished about 15 ½ miles today.
Overall, it was a pretty neat race and it made me appreciate all the extra “luxuries” we get at bigger marathons (like expos, medals, timing clocks at mile markers, medical tents, etc), since a lot of these features weren’t included in the race today. What was great, though, was the sincerity and generosity of the race organizers and you could tell when talking to them afterwards that they really hoped everyone had a great time. I’d definitely do the race again next year if schedule allows.
Ok, enough rambling for now. Good luck to everyone still racing this weekend!
Steve
I wish I would have taken more pictures of the WDW half (my first race ever) but I was afraid to slow down enough from my 15 min pace for fear of being swept. 
The 
