B&A Trail Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

I've been injured fairly often lately, and I've been playing around with shoes, so I wanted to take it easy, and experiment a bit. I also wanted to try my Zensah compression sleeves for a race to see if I would have issues. Earlier I had tried smaller sleeves and they gave me shin splints. These larger ones were a lot better. I also wanted to gain some confidence in pacing after a month or more of not running, since I have to lead a pacer group at the Frederick Marathon. Thus, when a friend said that she wanted me to pace her to a PR of about 2 hours, I was all over it!

Paced pretty well. Started out a bit slow for our goal, and then locked in right around 9 minute miles. Lost about 30 seconds on the turnaround hill, but had already banked a few. Started speeding up on the second half of the course, with a very slight downhill, and then as we got closer to the finish, we speed up some more. Last two miles were near 8:30 pace. Very nicely done for someone whose previous PR was 2:14. I'm happy with how she did, how I paced, and my shoes and sleeves worked out really well. Good day.

Nothing, this was just a fun day

Free massage!!


I wasn't trying to.


I consider this race to be our tradition. I've done this race 4 or 5 times. It's mainly a good half marathon, with a marathon available as well. You can sign up for the marathon if you like, and make the decision to run just the half, at mile 12.5. I've done that before and it's pretty interesting to decide at the last second. 2/3s of the runners do just the half, so it gets pretty bare out on the course for the second half. The 2nd half of the marathon is almost like training on the B&A Trail by yourself. But the half marathon has enough runners that it feels like a pretty decent sized race. The Striders tend to have really nice premiums that are oversized for some reason, and this one was no different. They even told us to order a size too small, which I did, yet they were still unavailable at packet pickup.

The post race party is really nice, with hot pizza, cookies, hot cider, coffee, showers, and free massages.

The aid stations are decent, nothing really changes there. One unique thing about this race is that they have a baggage dropoff available in the middle of the race, at the first aid station at mile 3, which you also pass later. If you throw your stuff down there, they will bring it back to the school for you.

I love races where you can stay warm in an area like a school, which this one had. Also, the outside potties were hardly being used at all before the race, which is a good sign, but I don't remember seeing hardly used in previous races. Where did everyone go? In the school probably.

A decent sized race, good parking, good food, good price. What's not to like?