Rex Healthcare City of Oaks Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

I enjoyed this race a lot. I entered it for fun and as a way to give some focus to my post Vineman training. Logistics were super easy with parking just a few blocks away from the start/finish line. I got to the start and did the port-a-pot thing and then went to bag check. I turned on my Garmin at this point. It just sat there. For minutes. I turned it off and turned it on again. No Garmin. I did a soft reset, nothing. At this point I decided that the battery and discharged overnight (it happened once before) and that since I was running with the 2 hour pace group, I didn't really need it. I put the Garmin in my bag and checked it.

I lined up with the two hour pace group. I could not hear a thing that the announcers were saying so I hope that they didn't say anything important. I chatted with a few folks in the pace group. More and more people kept coming. We were getting really packed in there -- the marathon, half marathon and 10k had a mass start.

And then we were off. The pace was very comfortable and I had a good time. Sometimes I ran with the two hour half marathon group and sometimes there was too much jostling and I went and ran with the four hour marathon group. I saw my parents at the half way point at Cameron Village and that was fun. I saw them before they saw me. I did a big wave and then the saw me. Fun! At about mile seven I had enough of the jostling in the pace group. I decided that if I was ahead of the pace group that I would be able to meet my goal so I did that. When we got to the first part of the clover leaf and did the out and back on Faircloth, I could see that I was a few blocks ahead of them. The same was true for the out and back on Hillsborough and on Gorman.

When I previewed the course I was concerned that the out and back would be boring but actually they were really fun. It was neat to see all of the other runners and I found it to be an enjoyable part of the course. After the hill over the tracks on Gorman with just over a mile to go, I tried to pick up my pace a bit for the run in to the finish line.


Nothing. It was meant to be a fun race and I had fun!

I had a hard time finding Kevin after the race. The finish area was a bit cramped and I could not see him. I was starting to get chilled so I tried to find the bag check. I went the wrong way and I found the FOOD. That was good. I grabbed some Great Harvest cinnamon swirl bread (yum!) and went back toward the finish area and found Kevin. Then I found my bags and put on a jacket.


Overall this was good event and I would do it again. The logistics for both packet pickup and parking were very good. The organizers could do a few things to improve it -- get the parked cars off the streets, have a family meet up area, have longer water station (hard to get over in time to get them) or more warning about them, better signage (food this way, bags that way) -- but that is just nit picking. Nice medal. Nice event shirt. I'm a happy camper.

Also, I hate it when they have women's results and men's results but not overall results.