Today I completed the America’s Finest City Half Marathon. I’m still not sure what my motivation is for continuing to run, but I figured I was already in shape from June’s marathon, so I might as well do a half marathon. This race was a completely different experience from the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon. This was significantly smaller than the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon with a limit of 6000 half marathon runners (it sold out) compared to over 20,000. The budget was much smaller as noticed with the race expo being held in the basement (basically) of a local hotel instead of the convention center. One of the biggest issues I saw with the race, due to its start location, is that we had to board buses to be driven about 25 minutes to the start line instead of basically driving right up to it. So I had to get up at 4:30 am for the 7 am start. Also, the race numbers were given out alphabetically instead of by estimated finish time and then everyone regardless of estimated finish time, started all bunched up. It took me over 2 miles of zig zagging before I was able to maintain my pace.
I did quite well and beat my goal of 2 hours (just over a 9 minute mile) by coming in at 1:49:29 for a pace of an 8 minute, 22 second mile. Not bad, in my opinion.
So, next year, I’ve decided to just run the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon (I’ve already signed up) and spend other times with activities like mountain biking and I know my wife wants to go kayaking, so maybe we can do that.
