Small races have issues, sometimes. I ran this as an extended tempo workout today. I warmed up two miles. The course ran around the ebay campus, out the trail and back. I asked the race director if I needed to run another loop around ebay upon exiting the trail. He said, "yes". Wrong. I ran out to where the turnaround was marked. I was leading everyone by two minutes or so. My garmin was over 6.5, so I figured this was the turnaround. There were no volunteers to help me out. I turned back. Upon exiting the trail, I was at 11.5. I prepared to run a final lap, but the volunteers told me to finish. I stopped and argued, telling them I needed to run one more lap. They told me I was supposed to finish, and had missed the real turnaround. I was frustrated, but decided to run the extra lap to make it fair and give me an actual half. It was perfectly 13.1. While I was running extra, the second place girl finished, having turned at the right spot. But, the course was short, so she ran 12.4 to my 13.1. They gave her the win. Apparently, no one else was told about an extra lap. I don't have an official time. Somewhere around 1:26. I'm not sure how long I argued with the volunteers. I kept under 6:20 average out, but the wind was pretty heinous coming back, and I slid into 6:40's. When I found out about my course mistake, I didn't care much anymore and just finished. Oh, well. 2 mile cooldown. I should feel pretty good Monday. | 