more on the half

the offical unoffical results are in. according to the white rock website my finsh time was 2:04:07 which is what garmin said. the splits were goofy:14:21, 9:41, 12:28, 9:40, 9:24, 9:32, 9:10, 8:56, 9:04, 8:54, 8:18, 3:34, 10:31, last 291.2ft=28sec. i think garmin did some re calculating. the website said the first 6 miles were a gradual uphill and that we wouldn't even notice because of the excitement of the start. well, that wasn't exactly accurate but, it was gradual sometimes. there were 4570 finishers in the white rock half. of those i was 1880 overall and 93 in my age group. it seemed far more crowded than the half i ran in november and having to dodge people was frustrating sometimes. there were other things about this race that were different. garmin had a bad day, what with the cloud cover and the tall buildings down town.

the start did not have pace corrals. about 5 minutes before the start people holding signs with the pace times on them were seen standing in a group near the starting line, then trying to move through the throng to postion themselves at the appropriate spot. there were plenty of water stops and porta-cans although i didn't need to stop for either one.

the course was okay and took us through many scenic neighborhoods and parts of dallas. it was especially fun to run through down town. all points of the race were well attended by enthusiastic spectators, many of whom had cookers in the their front yards that made it a little smokey. the start was in a chute created by tall building flanking both sides of the street. on a patio to the right and above where i was waiting for the gun, a live broadcast from the race was taking place and frank shorter ("hey look, thats frank shorter!") was the expert commentator. i don't know anything else about the broadcast but assume all the local news shows had segments of the race all day.

i think having bands playing on the course is funny. it was quirky but charming and distracting to run past a band dressed in overcoats mostly playing classic rock to a bunch of runners who will hear 20 seconds of music while they run past. meanwhile the band is freezing the their butts off at an hour of sunday morning when musicans would be normally not be playing, let alone be awake. it's also fun to hear them playing from a quarter mile away and wonder what their dress and attitude will be like this time of the morning. i wonder what they paid those guys?

all in all, i think the race was over hyped, over priced and over sold. i'm pleased that although i didn't come out fast enough and get a 2 hour race, i ran strong at the end. also and more importantly, it's always worth it to run with my friends and see everybody at the race and to be doing it at all.