Since I had plans to fly this morning out of Falcon Field near Phoenix up to Sedona for some trail running I looked for a race to get in early morning and found this inaugural Phoenix marathon and half. Since I ran the Lost Dutchman marathon down here two weeks ago the desire to do another one was minimal...I called up Hyrum , the race director and asked for an entry to the half and he was awesome. He actually got me into several of his races which seriously messed up my schedule for the month. Anyways, great race! Tons of fun, live bands, bonfires and just a high energy event. I only had my heavy trail shoes with me since we were here for trail running but they worked just fine.
I was grouped in the lead pack which was pretty tight for the first 5 miles. The race director told me that the course had a net 400 foot drop but that it was downhill the first 4 miles and then climbed back up with a two mile good hill so outside of the first five it was uphill. So \I took the first miles hard with the group. 5k was about 16:50, 10k came by at 33:45 and we were on the hills. I immediately lost a minute a mile but thankfully so did almost everyone around me. We were pathetic. Two guys actually increased pace at this point and they just ran away. It was so neat to see how guys can run who are in shape. The winner did negative splits uphill for the course. I was pretty happy to hang on to the end.
Very fun Saturday morning in the sun. First place master, which came as a surprise. It also had $150 which I hadn't known about. Sweet!
Now we are heading up to Sedona to look for some of the trails Jake recommended.
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