Forced myself not to go too nuts for the first mile. The 6:15ish pace seemed fairly comfortable. The slower mile splits are where some small hills occur, also some stretches of headwind.

Just before the 10k/half marathon split a 10k racer pulls up alongside me and says "lets bring her home"...I turned to him and said I'm doing the half and he turned and said "you rock" and offered me a fist bump. After the split things got extremely quiet. All of a sudden I heard someone from behind yell "Go Birkie!!" and I raised my arm to wave thanks - who was that???

I could only see one guy in front of me and we kept about the same distance apart for the rest of the race. It was weird being out there all alone after being used to running the 10k with thousands of people in past years. As I approached the turnaround it was not marked very clearly and there were 2 people standing quietly at some cones in the median strip of the parkway. I asked if that was the 9 mile marker and they mumbled something incoherent to me so I threw up my hands and just kept running by. Something didn't seem right and after about 50yds I stopped and turned and yelled to them to ask where the turnaround is. They said it was back at the cones where they were standing. WTF?????????????!!!! I was so frickin' pissed. No arrows on the road, no sign, a couple cones (there were hundreds of cones on the course), and 2 not very helpful volunteers cost me about 30 seconds. I never criticize volunteers and appreciate all their help, but this was fairly annoying. Oh well - get over it.

I started to feel the last few miles and my sciatica was making my left hamstring pretty stiff, but I knew I had a pretty good gap on the guys in back of me. It was great seeing the mass of runners on the way back. Received lots of encouragement from runners and saw Sal (sparco) out there as well. Heard a few other yells of "go Birkie or go Jim" but didn't have a clue who was out there. Sorry if I didn't reply coherently.

Managed to finish strong and was satisfied with the race. I thought I had 7th overall but the results said 8th. No one was just in front of me like the results said, so there must have been someone in the elite corral that was in the half. I thought the elite corral was only for the 10k...lesson learned for next year.

Nothing. I had zero expectations going into this race and only wanted to get a feel for where my fitness is this early in the season. I did a fairly tough time trial workout on the Computrainer on Thursday so my legs weren't real fresh. Even though the finish time was 8 minutes off my PR, I was pretty pleased with the result this early in spring.

Just walked around a little and then headed to the food tent. Got food and then jogged back to the van because I knew the other guys I drove down with did the 10k and were waiting for me.


Early in the season.


Very nice half marathon course.