My 2nd half marathon ever. Overall I felt pretty good and I'm getting a bit faster each race. I opted to skip wearing a watch so I would stop worrying about my splits and just go with how I'm feeling and enjoy the race, that plan ended up working out pretty well imo.
Super chilly at Aspen Grove. I stayed in the tent until about 20 minutes before the race. A lot of really cool, creative costumes. At the starting line group up I'm pretty sure I saw bloggers Allie, Lily and one other guy from the blog talking pre-race. (the guy was the 1:55 pacer for the race, I'll have to track down his name) I chickened out on introducing myself to any of them since I'm pretty sure our conversation would be "hi, I really like your blogs. you guys are awesome runners... well, have a good race" Pretty sure Allie was wearing crocs so I'm not sure what's up with that. Also, saw one dude running the entire race barefoot, right on man, i think... Bring on the pain when you step on a sharp rock...
On to the race... The start was slow slow, so many people. And some hippie cameraman parked his Matt Folley "van down by the river" van in the middle of the road to catch footage at the start, which blocked two thirds of the road, sort of annoying. Also (very fun race, just listing my complaints) the race directors should have skipped putting huge orange cones in the middle of the road from Aspen Grove to Sundance. I saw one poor lady completely biff it over one cone. A few people, including myself, slowed down to make sure she was okay.
The early miles down Sundance Canyon went fast, I let gravity do the work for me until we hit Provo Canyon. Slowed down slightly once we hit Provo Canyon. At mile 8 the 1:50 pacers caught up to me. I followed them until almost mile 10 but I'm pretty sure they were going a tad faster than 8:23 min/mile so it was wearing me out so they dropped me. Also, a 9 year old in a Superman costume was ahead of me for the entire race, he dropped me (too) at mile 10. He must come from a big time running family, or actually be another child from Krypton. That's about it for the race I held an okay pace through the finish. Found my family, grabbed my clothing bag and got out of there. Super fun well organized race. I'll get my approximate splits from Bill and I'll post those later today... ~ Peaks out edit: here are the approx splits, from Bill's Garmin - 8:29, 7:24, 7:28, 7:15, 7:53, 10:27 (waiting for people & bathroom stop) 8:59, 8:35, 8:56, 8:44, 9:50, 9:17, 8:57, (7:58 min/mile for the last .1)
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