Oh boy. Was this ever a comedy of errors. (Mine, not the organizers'.) I forgot to set my alarm
(fortunately I had a backup just in case), my watch was dead and I couldn't find my backup, and I
got to the race late for still more reasons I *won't* go into here. I did manage to scrape up a
chip, but they'd turned off the starting mat by the time I got down there.
The race itself was around White Rock Lake, an agreeable venue, even on a breezy 34-degree day. The
course was a tadpole: Out, loop, and back. The loop went through some fairly nice woodsy residential
areas; the rest was along the lake.
I caught the tail end of the racers right at the 1-mile mark and started passing people -- now
there's a nice feeling! At the first few mile markers I asked people if they had the race or clock
time, enough to determine that I was somewhere around my goal of an 8-minute pace, but it wasn't
clear how much time I'd lost; somewhere between 10 and 14 minutes. I caught up to a co-worker,
offered some words of encouragement and soldiered on. There were a few hills, chiefly on a couple of
overpasses, but the course was mostly flat. The last few miles were into the wind. They had water in
enough places that I could take my gels about where I wanted to.
Finally I crossed the line about 1:57:40; my best guess is that I was about 11 minutes late, so I'm
entering this as a 1:46:30, a bit slower than the 1:45 I was shooting for but not too bad, all
things considered.
Post-race food was bagels and bananas plus beer; the bagels went fairly fast.
My only gripe beyond the somewhat meager food is that we had to share the road with a lot of cars;
one, going against traffic in the only open lane, was actually weaving in and out of the stream of
runners as it dodged other cars. Bleh. Most of the time the cops at the intersections were doing a
good job, though.
Three stars. Brian Bob says check it out.
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Brian P. Baresch Fort Worth, Texas, USA Professional editing and proofreading
If you're going through hell, keep going. --Winston Churchill