What is the best way not to crap all over a race? Give the race its flowers.
It seems as if every review of this race sounds like a broken record. So much so that I won’t rehash my complaints; just read some of my previous reviews. My “fan base” is always surprised when I keep running in this event. The quick answer is the following: It’s super-close to my house. There are not that many half marathons in this area. It’s also very easy in-and-out, with lots of parking. I decided to sit down and ponder what I really don’t like about this event. I’ve concluded that all the other things going on (5K, 10K and the one-mile fun run for the youngins) are taking more of a center stage; the half marathon is an afterthought. In my opinion, advertising that the cutoff is three hours has stunted any potential growth of this race. With 293 participants, do the ends justify the means? This is without a doubt one of the smallest half marathons I’ve ever participated in, and the numbers have remained consistent over the past years. Being the slowpoke that I am, only two people finished after me. This is not the case in any other race I’ve entered. Once again…in my opinion…if they don’t advertise a three-hour cutoff, I think more people would enter the race. With all of that out of the way, I was very excited to run my first half marathon of the race season.
I picked up my race packet on Saturday; the shirt was just okay. I’m not a big fan of highlight yellow running shirts. It was Glenda’s birthday, so we went out to dinner that night at Incontro Italian Cuisine Steakhouse. The food was good (huge portions), but I can’t say that it “knocked my socks off.” That notwithstanding, I would eat there again. We went home and I watched some college football until I couldn’t keep my peepers open anymore.
Now on to some positives about the race. I do love the fact that this race starts at 6:20am. They want everyone off the course before the fun run starts. I was excited to run and was determined to finish as close to three hours as possible. The temperature was 61° when the race started, and it did not get much warmer than that. With so few participants, I ran most of this race with the road to myself. One of the best complements I could give this event is that there is a water station every single mile; not just water…Gatorade as well. You don’t even see that in bigger races like Miami or Gasparilla. One negative is only one bathroom along the way, and it was at the turnaround. I had to pee two times, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination where I went the second time. I spoke to Lenny the last hour of the race, so it made the time go by quicker. It was going to be close to finishing under three hours, but I missed it by only four minutes. The best part of all was I crossed the finish line before all the rugrats got there. Of course, I still had to go and hunt down my medal.
No more complaining about this race. Just gratitude I’m still running strong.
