My hip flexors started hurting pretty early in the race, but it didn't affect anything much for a while. Gradually it got worse and by mile 11 I had to walk. Overall, even with having to walk two miles (and my increasingly slower pace the previous several miles), along with the complicated bathroom stop, I still pretty much made my goal time (2:30:52 v. goal time of 2:30).

There is a "rule" about not trying anything new on race day. I bought a new race skirt the day before. It was a little big, but not too bad, or so I thought. The skirt is made to fit low on the hips. Less than five minutes into the race I realized that I had a problem in that my skirt was falling off. I had visions of having to hold my clothes on for the entire 13.1 miles until I had this brilliant thought. I had a couple extra safety pins and I just pinned my shirt to the skirt and solved the problem. Of course, this did complicate a later bathroom stop because I had forgotten I had pinned all my clothes together and trying to unpin everything in a porta-potty ...

Walked to meet-up point. I did have cramping in my calves on this walk and I think it was probably due to not enough electrolytes.


My hip flexors. I had gotten some deep tissue massage work on them twice this week (Monday and Saturday) and am not sure whether the issue is more of that was needed or more training/fitness.


This is a very well managed race. However, this year they had wave starts instead of a mass start and I don't think that was an improvement.

I didn't go to the post-race festivities, so I can't comment.