4th Of July Half Marathon….Finished!

Well,  I had a pretty good day yesterday.  I guess Cheryl did too.    I should probably talk about that since that is more interesting. 

We woke up incredibly early yesterday,  around 4 A.M.  In traditional Half Marathon fashion, the moon was out and red-ish.   The Park where the start of the race was located was only about 5 miles from the Hotel.  There were already quite a few people out and about.   

This Half Marathon was a little different from the Lincoln and Red Shoe Half Marathon.  There were lots of people, but the spectators were limited.  I guess that was ultimately good for me. I was able to get some pretty good shots without having to fight through a wall of strangers. 

I knew I was not going to be able to capture any mid-race shots on this one.   My only hope was to catch Cheryl at the start and the finish when the runners looped back.  as mentioned before, there were plenty of runners, and finding Cheryl in the chaos was going to be tough.   So,  we took a few pre-run pictures by the start line just to be safe that we had something to post.

The gun was off!   The fast group were the first spotted,  Cheryl is somewhere behind this mess!   She was only one group behind the elites.  I thought if I took random shots of the crowd, I could “accidentally’ catch her.  It still might be possible that she is one of these “blurry” people in the background. 

After the front group ran by,  I paused for a moment to let the endless tide of “slow” people run by.  I call them slow because there were in the 10+ minute starting mark.   That does not mean they ARE slow;  It could be that they just failed to jump in the right location on time.   It all comes down to “CHIP TIME” in  the end anyway.   Chip time is the time it takes for your bib chip to cross the start line mat.  At that moment, the race begins for you as an individual.

So, I ran down and paid the parking fee…I’m sure I could have gotten away with NOT paying, but in the end, I was forced to overpay for the location.  I’m still going to complain about that one. 

I had about an hour and a half to kill so I stood by the finish and struck up a conversation with a random stranger.   Many people brought their dogs, much to my delight!   I love petting and talking about dogs of all shapes and sizes.  His was some terrier/mutt mix.   Very friendly! 

While talking,  one of the police K9 units came up to me.   I had not noticed, but I guess the dog was sniffing my bag.  ( the guy I was talking to DID notice it,  He had a bag as well!)  It was probably a good thing I had not noticed it, because I would have wanted to pet the German Sheppard….thus upsetting the police man and causing all kinds of suspicion.   And it is even a BETTER thing that I did not have my usual stash of DOG TREATS in the Hello Kitty hand bag.   I guess I might have looked “suspicious”  sporting a designer Hello Kitty bag to a Half Marathon.  But even more suspicious is a lone creepy looking man in his mid 40’s WITHOUT a lovely item. 

    So Cheryl finally arrived.  This race was her best time for the Half Marathon yet.   She managed to shave several minutes off her previous personal best record.  I guess the heat and fatigue of Grandma’s Marathon did not cause here any problems in the end. Isn’t that nice?

So, let’s drop the sarcasm and talk about the actual results.

Her Previous best time for 13.1 miles was 1:49 13.  

New personal Record :  1:45: 53 seconds!   That is 3 minutes 23 seconds faster! 

Small Note:   Notice the 53 seconds.   She missed the Boston Qualifying time by 53 seconds.   Her personal goal for this race was to aim for 1:45 minutes….Thus missing it by 53 seconds again!   Still,  She is petty happy with the results.

Her average pace was 8:05 minutes per mile.

She was 11 out of 167 females in her age group.  91 out of 1323 females over all.  and 391 out of 2479 total runners both male and female!

The numbers do not reflect the total number of people running that race.   You see,  there was a “relay” running the half marathon at the same time.   Two people, running half of the half marathon.   That’s 6.5 miles each runner….roughly a 10K.  

So, to celebrate, we hunted down Uncle Sam and posed with him…..

And then we had ‘BBQ’ afterwards in the after party.  By the way BBQ in Minnesota is really just a hotdog with ketchup and Mustard.  

So that is all!   We arrived back home relatively early but fell asleep before we could enjoy any fireworks.   Incidentally,  Yesterday marks the 5 year mark when we first arrived in Iowa.   Ah, how the time flies!  I actually thought we would not be  here this long, however, life has a funny way of dealing cards. 

So enjoy the pics,    the rest of them….I took so many after all.  

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Cheryl also took this time to “dust off” her 13.1 Magnet on the Subie.   It is good to keep things polished from time to time to show off that you still have the stuff that got you the award to begin with .  

 

The rest of the day will be spent trying to score, recover my overpaid parking fees, medicating the cats, and possibly trying to fix the mess Cheryl just made in the office.   I guess the Bookshelf just fell off the wall….complete with all of my origami, books, Magazines, and her finishing medals.   I knew one more medal would cause the destruction of something…..BOOM!