Liz & Lea, heading for the star line
My friend Mark from Brecksville was also running the 1/2
The race took place on Sunday before Thanksgiving. In our family this, and the Spring Classic, is an annual favorite. My wife and daughter run the 5K, I run the ½ Marathon. My wife always has a good race and she claims that she “owns the race”. She has actually won an award in every 5K race she ran in either Spring or Fall Classic. I have never won an award.
I had a good race. The weather was nice (cold but sunny) and this made it a very fast race overall. My official time is 1:32:40 (7:04 pace). Even though this is not a ½ Marathon PR, it is my fastest time in this course, out of a total of 10 races. However, I only finished 8/35 in my age group of old guys (50-54) and 66/325 overall.
Lately I have been running all races with my Fuji 3d camera and I take pictures and videos during the race
To give you an idea of how fast the race was overall, there were about 50 runners (out of 325) with a time faster than 1:30!!!
Mile splits: 7:04, 6:57, 7:01, 6:57, 6:52, 7:00, 7:06, 7:06, 7:11, 7:11, 7:06, 6:50, 7:03. Overall I am happy with my consistent and fast pace. I have decided I will never win an award in this race (never have) so I just relax and enjoy the torture of going up and down this rather boring course TWICE!
I was happy, smiling, while I was approaching the finish line, when I noticed this guy sprinting by me. I tried to outkick him but it was too late. I did not have enough time to react!
My wife Liz won 1st place in her age group with 26:07. Lea finished at 32:03.
After the race, I read a lot of complains in active.com. Apparently, they ran out of water, out of food, and out of medals. There were complains about the parking, restrooms, and the 5K slow runners who were getting in the way of the 1/2 runners (apparently, the 5K started a bit late so the 1/2 runners met them towards the end of the first loop). None of these affected us. We had a nice race and we'll come back to do it in Spring!
