VABeach is over 2 hours from my place. I spent the day before the race helping in the Brooks Run Happy Island then drove up to Marilyn's place for the night. Did not realize she lived over an hour from the race and we still had to get up at 3:45 to get there.
My navigation at that inhuman hour sucked and I almost took a wrong turn. Marilyn called me to correct me and for some stupid reason it wasn't going through my car sync mode and I couldn't hear her....Anyway I got corrected and on the right road....Made it down fine--then once I hit Princess Anne Parkway to get to the shuttle site traffic came to a halt. I think it took 30 minutes from the time I hit Princess Anne to get to the parking lot. Literally parked at 5:59 and the last shuttles to the race start were at 6 AM. Boarded and nibbled on that pumpkin-flax granola from our swag bag.
Got to the Convention Center, found bag drop off and hopped in line for the porta potties. Unfortunately, the shortest line stopped moving once my butt was in it for about 10 minutes. At about 6:55 I gave up and decided to just take my chances for potties on the course.

My heart rate was already up from stressing about the traffic snafus and waiting for the potties! I did some stretching while standing in the line.
What else? Some gu....find the corral......hang out and wait for my wave to go off.

This was a train through race about halfway through my marathon plan. I still do not fully understand WHY a half marathon is necessary part way through a full marathon plan. BUT, I was given a free entry from Brooks (LOVE being a Brooks Fanatic!) and it fit into my plan so I did it. I guess if I had a better understanding of the rationale why it was needed I might have put more thought/ effort into the logistics.....I wound up looking at the day as a well supported long training day in a different location.
Given that it started off low to mid 70's with fairly high humidity at race start I decided to go conservative. Tucked in behind the 2:15 pace group and held that for more than half the course. Somewhere after the 10K I took a walk break through the aid stations approach. That helped me get through with nutrition and hydration....
After mile 9 the wheels fell off. I was hurting all over and still am not sure why, this is my seventh HM. I don't usually suffer on them. Think the heat got to me, my HR was a lot higher than it has been in training. Took walk breaks as needed and would start back running when I felt better.
Finally got to mile 10-11 where they were passing out popsicles--God bless the people doing this. Between those and the lady with the bowl of grapes....and people with hoses there is a special place in heaven for the kindness of these folks. Not official race volunteers, just nice spectators....
Mile 12, no more walk breaks allowed. Just run. Notice the female vocalist has a pretty voice from this band....
Mile 13 and we are on the boardwalk. Now I go to Ocean City MD all the time I KNOW a boardwalk is supposed to be wooden. This thing is some nasty cement sidewalk that is no fun and I swear the last 0.2 miles seemed to take fact-ing FOREVER.
The finish line was kind of a let down. They keep handing you stuff (water, gatorade, chocolate milk, banana, pretzels, medal, wet towel....) but there is no way that I can see to get onto the beach to let the water wash over the legs.
I started to feel nauseas (and NO I didn't take all that stuff they gave me and eat it all at once) Found my dry bag to change to flip flops and tried to search for Marilyn and Neil but just felt lousy so I hit the shuttle back to my car.

I paced conservatively given the humidity. If I had a better understanding of the rationale for the HM halfway through marathon plan I might have structured my race plan more.

Walked around finding my stuff and the shuttle stop

too Faching HOT & humid

don't feel well

RnR is a good series. I have nothing bad to say about the race or the organizers....It was just not my day