The weather at the start was 27 degrees with an 11 mph NE wind. When the gun went off, my garmin was still not working so i just started the stop watch and went with it. The whole group was going way too fast and when I hit my first hill on campus, I dropped by Hammer gel and had to stop and pick it up. My goal was to run until I couldn't run anymore, walk the water stops and hills and do what I had to do to get to the finish. The 2:30:00 cut off was certainly in the back of my mind and I knew that I had to keep under 11:30 min/miles to do that. My garmin did start working about .4 mi into the race but I also knew that the time was not matching with the distance which was frustrating. Stopped at the first water station which was were my dad and I broke apart. He was doing the 3 miler so he was going to go sit in the car and chill till I came back hours later. Then I was hit by the first big hill which I was just forced to walk. When I got up to the top it was time to start running again and I did for as long as I could. I knew there was going to be a turn off soon and it came up and had a huge down hill which I flew down. Then we turned into the wind. It was horrible and I used a few people up ahead of me to draft off of to save some energy. See here was the thing; I was clipping away around 10 min/miles or less which was way too fast, but I was not sure what else I would have to deal with so I just went with it. We had to climb a huge hill to get back out on the main road and then run down that road for what seemed like forever before we hit another aid station around 4.5 miles. I was able to take some shot bloks at that point, but it was really too late. Then I hit another big downhill and when I got to the bottom started talking to a group that I was playing leap frog with. I decided to run with them for a while but when I turned onto Nicolet, I was in a huge direct headwind with fried legs that were just not responding like earlier. I was a long mile, but close to the turn off I ran into Joan, a nurse at my job who had a sign and was taking pictures. It was really nice to see her and get that cheer; it helped for a while. But then when I got onto Van Lanen, my group got ahead of me and I walked to take a gel and there was no way I could run up the hill at the end of the road so I just did what I could and walked. There was a photographer at the top and that was certainly not the best picture I have ever taken. When I got up to the top of the hill, it was a 3 mile straight shot back to campus, but my legs were just not hearing of it and then my stomach started acting up. Finally around 9.5, I ran into another nice person who I talked to for a while and was able to get enough in my legs to keep going. I switched to the 4:1 run:walk. My legs finally started coming back to me around mile 10 but my time was getting very close to cut off. I could see off the bluffs the campus buildings but there were much farther than I thought they were. When I went down the final hill onto campus, got my own personal escort across the road. I was able to take some water in but for the most part it was me against time. I winded through campus finally saw the mile 13 sign and made the final charge for the finish line, just 40 seconds short of the cut off! The weather at noon was 30 degrees with a 23 mph NE wind.

For an early season race, this was pretty good. The weather was cold and windy which did not help. The hills were bigger than I thought they were going to be. I have a lot of work to do with building up the endurance and fixing my nutrition.

I walked around a bit, got a few cups of water, which proved to be too much water in the end. We went inside to see if there was any food and I ran into Kelly from work. Then we got in the car and headed home. Then on the way home that water and some of the gatorade came right back up.


I am in the middle of Ironman training so my legs were really not tapered for this race. I had not trained the severe hills on this course so that was a challenge right there. The weather was cold and windy which I really hadn't been training in. And finally, my nutrition was not spot on and I went out way too fast for the first half.


Given the fact that this race was a charity memorial race and the registration was only 20 bucks, the event was good. The course is unique and with it being a training run for Cellcom, it is certainly an interesting event. Then add the weather and wind to it and this was a race to remember.
Plus I PR'ed this race by 47 seconds when it comes to my best stand alone half marathon ever!!!