Well, I am a few hours from the finish of the Earth Day Half Marathon. In the time since the finish, I enjoyed the race party and snacks with my running friend, Deb; stopped at the hardware store on an errand; ate some lunch and took a very, very long hot bath. I'm enjoying the sunshine on the deck with my laptop compared to last week when we had blizzard-like conditions. I had very low expectations for the race....a few days ago I had blogged that I would be "participating" in the event as opposed to racing. I think this mind shift worked to my advantage!
Last year's recap included my review of the course, packet pickup, etc. This truly is one of the best organized events around. For those of us who do not embrace change well, it is awesome to show up for an event and know exactly where to go and what to expect. Our difficult March and April weather did throw a couple of curveballs to the race, but it all worked out well. The only problem I noticed on the day was that the race start was delayed about 25 minutes due to some issue along the course with barricades that St. Cloud PD required to be corrected before the start of the race. In a past blog, I'd mentioned the grassy hill going into mile 3. That was the piece of the course that did cause a problem. The race organizers did the best they could and moved the grassy hill spot down about another quarter mile and then put a carpet down on the hill for the runners. It was actually the hill that David's ski races there always finished on...but we went down instead of up :-). At the bottom, we were fairly quickly onto a paved bike path. At around mile 7, there were some really wet spots on a bike path and one icy area, but my shoes remained dry inside. The race normally finishes on the St. Cloud State football field, but they have a dome over the field for winter activities that wasn't able to come down just yet so we finished right next to it. My GPS still read 13.31 miles, so the small changes did not shorten the course. As for the running itself, I couldn't have asked for a better day. The weather was around 40 degrees with bright sun and almost no wind. Deb and I had said we wanted to try for 9:00 miles hoping to hang on as long as we could. When looking at our training, that seemed like a good goal. We began the race with around an 8:40 mile and were happy to still feel completely fresh. As the miles rolled on, our slowest mile was around 8:58 going down the carpet hill. Deb and I stayed together until about the halfway point when she let off the pace a little to be sure she'd be strong to the finish. I continued on and most miles were in the 8:40's. I made it to the finish in 1:56:04, a full five minutes faster than last year and averaging 8:52 per mile. Since a half marathon is technically 13.1 miles and my Garmin reads 13.31 miles, my watch says my average is 8:43 per mile. Either way, it was clearly faster than 9:00. Success! At the post race party, we noticed that people were truly happy at the race. While some runners were struggling a little in the last 5K or so due to lack of training or whatever, people were friendly and encouraging. A little sunshine and incredible running weather helped A LOT. I also believe that there were quite a few people who had decided to participate rather than run hard due to lack of consistency with their training more than lack of effort. With a lot of the pressure off, runners were not even acting frustrated over the delayed start. Earth Day added "Cheer Zones" in a rougher part of the course from miles 8-10. That was so fun! Groups of people signed up for certain segments and really pumped up the noise. My favorite zone was a group of people wearing tropical clothing playing music and giving out a lot of high 5's. I think Deb's favorite was the spot were they had free beer (ID wristbands required). Well, Earth Day 2018 was a much better experience than 2017. Thank you to the race organizers and volunteers along with my fellow runners for the fun morning. Happy running--Missee
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AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
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