Ocean City Half Marathon - Run

I was worried about the weather. Forecast was for rain and SW wind, which would be in our faces almost the whole race, since it was a point to point run. I stayed within myself for most of the race, meaning that my breathing was under control and I had the ability to speed up my pace if I wanted to. The mile markers were uneven and hard to find, at times, so it was difficult to judge the effort other than perceived exertion and HR. I had decent splits, but lost my higher gear around mile 8. I had hoped to run sub 7:00 miles for the last 5K (like VaBeach), but I was too aggressive in my early pacing and just had to hold on until the end.
I set a new PR, bettering last September's 13.1 by 2:20, I got awarded 1st in my AG, thanks to a 44 y/o getting 2nd overall, so I can't complain. Very happy to get the hardware.

If this had been an A race, I would have tapered better. I think my workload leading up to the race resulted in more fatigue than I would have liked.
Nutrition-wise, I had planned on taking a gel at either mile 6 or mile 8 and missed them. I don't know if it would have made a difference or not, but after mile 8, the effort to maintain pace became significantly tougher. I did take a gel at mile 10, but that was probably a waste of Gu by that point. And I didn't drink enough water with it.

I felt pretty good, so I ran back out onto the course to run in with Dave. Drank my Endurox, ate some bananas, then headed up to the post-race festivities for some beer.


Insufficient taper, wind (but I couldn't do anything about that).


Happy with my performance, but I over-estimated my ability.
Swag bag was the worst I've ever gotten - they could have saved the bag and just handed out t-shirts.
Post-race was so-so, but they had more food than most and they served cold beer (1st 2 free and cheap after that). The problem, and this is endemic to every race I've been to is that they serve crap. And an endurance "athlete", or athlete wannabe, I'm usually consciencous about what I put in my body. What do you get at races? Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, brownies, etc.. Saturated fat, nutritionally void carbs, and sugar. I don't get it.
The post race was so-so from an organization standpoint, but I enjoyed getting together with Dave, Todd, and Jeremy (grandson of church member, who we met at finish line - nobody knew he was racing) and rehashing the race and other BS. I also liked having a close-to-home race. I'll do it again, but hope they can improve over the years.