Angie's Crazy Half Marathon race report

I found my 'cardio fix' at Angie's Crazy Half Marathon. The Captain approved my vacation, which enabled me to take off the night half of my shift. I wasn't prepared for a 13 mile run, but I made due.

In bed by 11 pm and back up at 4 am. Out the door at 4:30 am and arrived at University of Houston Clear Lake at 5:45am for early registration.

Everything went smooth, but I'm glad I was there early as Angie suggested. During registration I noticed the woman wrote the letter, "A" on my bib. I asked why she wrote an "A" and she told me it was for the start line corral assignments. I didn't think too much about it until I walked to the start line. Immediately I saw the very well defined A thru D corrals. The next thing I noticed were all the elite-looking runners in the front corral. I was CLEARLY not an "A" corral runner. While registering I told them I was hoping for a 2:30 run. Maybe they thought I said 1:30. Who knows, but I moved my Clydesdale ass into the back of the "B" corral.

I'm always frustrated when races state they have a RIGID start time and end up starting late. I've never understood why this happens. It appeared this would happen again today. Before we had a chance to build any frustration, the announcer advised us we would be starting late and gave us an explanation as to why. Apparently there was a last minute wheelchair entry. The RD allowed the sole wheelchair participant to partcipate with a respectable 5-minute lead. This was the right decision for the race director and no one seemed to mind after we were advised of the situation.

I'm not a fan of the course scenery (it's the same as the USA 10-miler, which I've run twice). Scenery isn't an issue the RD has control over, but it DOES affect my running.

Mother Nature did her part this morning. The temps were absolutely perfect for running. For the most part the race seemed very well organized and I'd jump at the opportunity to run it again.

Decent swag. HUGE finishers medal, coffee mug, bag, t-shirt, and all the typical race propaganda. Lots of post race food and drinks that included BBQ, drinks, and all the fixing's.

I ran with my aerobic-1 PIMsters in mind. I followed our current schedule of run 5-minutes, walk 2-minutes, which I did a mere 22 times....

Ooops, Vic just reminded me I forgot to include me time.

Run:
13.1 miles
2:32:20
11:38 pace

Per my garmin (I'll take the chip time, close enough):
13.25 miles
2:31:55
11:27

Attached are 3 photos (click the picture to enlarge):

Picture 1 is the huge, albeit beautiful medal
Picture 2 is my "A" corral bib
Picture 3 is my 5/2 cycle as shown on a graph from garmin. Can you see my porta potty break?