This was the first time I did an evening race. The race started at 5:30 in front of the JW Marriott in the Hill Country of San Antonio. There was also a 5K and a 10K so there were definitely lots of runners at the beginning. At the start line there were two guys who definitely looked competitive but the rest looked normal. I tried to go out fairly conservative since one of the guys at the start said the first half is pretty hilly. It definitely was. The first mile was down toward the entry to the resort and back up. Unfortunately all of the 5k runners had just gotten to the golf course paths by the time we got there. We had to run past all of them on the left so it was a little annoying. The course was marked by hundreds of glow sticks but it was still very dark. I ended up running almost the whole race with a guy named Mitch. This definitely helped a lot. He's a contractor that lives in San Antonio. He took up running again only a year ago and he gave me a run for my money. I was impressed. We almost took a couple of wrong turns along the way but we made it eventually.
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