I really didn't know how this race was gonna go down. I knew it wasn't going to be fast or great, given my leg's wackiness the last few days and the last couple weeks of unintentionally reduced mileage (plus the cold - and Travis's cold). Started out slow. Couldn't feel my toes for the first couple miles, and the rest of my body was pretty stiff and cold too. The strange leg soreness/stiffness intensified a bit in the early miles. Pulled back on the pace a little more. Body and mind felt otherwise fairly decent. Kept telling myself it was really just a training run - time didn't matter *that* much. Eventually, by about mile 6 my legs finally warmed up and the weird feeling in my right leg seemed to go away.

Time was 1:08 at the halfway point, so I knew I was headed for my Personal Worst time unless a miracle happened (it didn't, in case you were planning to hold your breath til the end). But by about mile 8 or so I also knew I felt decent enough to pick up the pace a bit. Somewhere around this time I left Travis behind. He had told me several times before that I could go on if I wanted, but up til that point I thought it smarter to hold my pace back. By now, though, I knew he was hurting and didn't want to make him feel like he had to push himself harder just to keep up with me. So I just kept pushing the pace at a comfortably hard level. I started passing a lot of the people that we had fallen back from or who had passed us earlier, and that began to feel good. Hit The Hill (an overpass) just past mile 12 that I had heard about. I had held myself back a little after mile 11 to prepare for it, so I was good to go and pushed on up. With just over a 1/2 mile to go I started to crank up the pace some more and pushed until I hit the finish line.

(Nutrition - 3 Luna Moons each around miles 6 and 10. Drank a little freezing cold water at each aid station)

Even though the time was a PW by ~ 2 minutes, I knew I gave that course all I had to give today. I don't think I could've done anything differently. I also managed a pretty significant negative split (1:08:xx for the first half, 1:03:xx for the second). That and the fact that I didn't give up before or at any point during the race were small victories for me today. Oh, and I guess the fact that I've now run 5 half marathons in the last 10.5 months ain't too shabby either.

Walked a little, including back towards the finish line so I could watch Travis finish.


Weeeeeeelllll. There were a number of things, some already mentioned. Plus it wasn't an "A" race...really more like a "C" largely intentioned as a training run. I had hoped (up until this last week) that I might still manage to PR and finally break 2 hours, but that was simply not in the cards for today and that's fine. I'll get there. Even though the time was slower today, I felt a ton better than I did during the RnR AZ 1/2 in January, so that's a plus.


Very well-organized race. Could've been more volunteers at a few of the aid stations but since I wasn't in a huge hurry I didn't worry about it. A couple of them had themes which was fun. Not a great race for someone who needs a lot of crowd support, but it was a nice run along the river and course was not too crowded once everyone spread out a little.