first off this is an awesome race course. it winds on a paved trail through the resort, past some stables, a small airport, a golf course, bird sancturay, past the river and best of all completely flat!!!! oh and there were only about 1200 races too.
the night before. note the hot hands, arm warmers (aren't those cool I am breaking the nothing new on race day rule but don't care) and had to buy a hat to keep the rain off.
me just before the race. note the wet around me and how everyone is bundled. I added more layers since it was dang cold when we left to be at the start I prayed that we either have cold or rain just not both and just before the race the rain stopped YEAH. Last year the race was in the 70-90 degree range.
just before the race and yes NO RAIN. its been raining for days and I fretted about it all night long hearing the rain fall and freaking out about the 40 degree weather. I was not happy. they had announced that the long course had to be shortened due to unsafe conditions on the road SNOW in JUNE.
we followed parts of the river along the course:
Among some of the other things we passed along the course was the horse stables and some pastures (taken from my iphone and not edited at all):
me finishing the race with a personal best time of (ok don't laugh I am old and new at this) 2:59:32. I just wanted to get under 3 hours and barely did it all things considering I am stoked. this meant I took 17 minutes off my last race which was the rock n roll vegas race in december. this was my 3rd 1/2 marathon in less than a year and i am showing improvement so that makes me happy
I thought the metals were exceptionally cool for this race.
this is a fun app called filtermania2 for the iphone and ipad I thought this was pretty cool
lastly I had to show off my best nike fuelband time ever and the finish shirt I bought from the race:
all in all a great race I did have some knee pain around mile 8 but it only slowed me down a bit. I met some great people along the way and loved chatting with them. One of my favorite things about these races is the people you meet it is so inspiring to me to hear their stories.
check out more photos for this weeks challenge here:
more to come of the area soon. I need to work on uploading all the photos the phone shots were easier than the rest. All I can say is this area is amazing