Moe's Better Half Marathon Race Report

I tackled another half marathon the other weekend, and it was a great one. I decided to sign up for Moe’s Better Half Marathon when my friend Linda told me she was going to do it. It appealed to me for several reasons:

·         1.  Linda was doing it

·         2.  I’d never done it before and, as I was researching it, realized the RD was retiring so it would                be its last year; and

·         3.  It looked like a tough course.

I know what kind of numbers I can run on a mostly flat course, so attempting to go under 2 hours on a course that had hills was sort of daunting to me. Both times I had signed up to run in Austin, which has hills, I ended up injured. So, I realized that outside of half-ironman races, I hadn’t really done a stand-alone, hilly 13.1 miles.

Race morning came with overcast skies, cool-ish temps, but no heavy downpours! We met up with Linda race morning and did a quick packet pickup, which included some pretty nice swag.

Then it was time to race. This is probably one of the smallest races I’ve done, and it was weird to be able to see the beginning of the line of runners ahead of me instead of the typical mass of thousands of bodies. I quickly settled into a rhythm that I hoped I could maintain and was soon confronted with the “hills”. I just took my time going up the gradual, long climbs and tried to keep my turnover steady. It seemed to be working, and I noticed I was able to pass up groups of people and keep ahead of them.

I finally found my “group” and we spent a few miles playing tag with each other, taking turns taking the lead and falling back. We finally separated with about 3 or 4 miles left, and I knew this was the time I needed to buckle down and continue to make it hurt. Miles 10-12 were uphill back to the finish and I noticed my pace falling off a bit, but I had built up enough of a lead that even with the slight slowing down I was safe in my goal. Finish time of 1:57:36 and pace of 8:57!

I met Moe after the race, and he is a super cool dude. I’m only sad that I didn’t know about this race sooner. I think I heard another RD is going to be taking over this race in the future so, hopefully, us runners will be able to continue to have a challenging course to play on.