What a wonderful race! I now have a new unaided PR by nearly 3 minutes (the course is an out-and-back on the Boise Green Belt). This is my second year in a row running this race (my sister lives in Boise so we spend a few days hanging out and jump into this half (only $38)). My sister just lives a bit over a mile from the start of the course so I did a warm-up jog over and got the bowels taken care of. The weather was pretty perfect with low 60's, a little tiny breeze, and little to no humidity. The race at 7:30 and we were off. I started of rather conservative and passed several runners toward the end of the first mile. Around mile 3 I felt something hitting my leg and looked down to see that shoe was coming untied (darn it). I slowed a bit leading up to the turn-around but then was able to get into a good rhythm going down stream. A couple little bump in the trail slowed me a bit but otherwise I was feeling great. I got passed into fifth with about 2 miles to go but passed my self in fourth (a different guy) with about a third of a mile to go. I ended up finishing 23 seconds behind 3rd (darn shoe lace). 5:47 (I still think this mile marker is short), 6:01, 6:23 (had to tie my shoe), 6:09, 12:30 (missed the marker), 6:28, 6:08, 6:11, 6:20, 5:59, 6:09, 5:57 and 36 seconds for the last 0.1. After chatting with the others and resting up a bit I headed out for a 5 mile cool down while waiting for awards. Collected my miniature bat (a good forget me stick) for first in my division and jogged it back to my sisters house. | 