Beautiful in a barren and apocalyptic kind of way...a long path stretching through the center of a humid and steaming wetlands preserve, desolate and empty except for the scattered corpses of half-eaten frogs, torn limb to limb and left half consumed on the wet asphalt by decadent and wasteful birds (I hope!). That was the general description of the half marathon course this morning, though it doesn't really communicate the stifling lack of air and the peculiar odor rising from the aforementioned path which presumably had something to do with the masses of unfortunate amphibians. The lung-crunching mugginess combined with my less-than-ideal pre-race meal of filet mignon and bourbon the night before convinced me early on to re-evalute my race goals and "sub-1:26" morphed into "finish under 1:27, get a PR".
| The splits tell the tale...I did everything perfectly to meet that goal, but my body simply rebelled somewhere around the 12th mile. I recovered sufficiently to finish strong, but the damage had already been done. I really can't complain though. Most of the race felt like an ungodly sauna and my body now feels like it ran a sub-1:26 effort. And (to bury the lead) I won! My time would have placed me fourth last year, I believe, but this isn't last year. I'm a little bummed that there was no finish tape and no awards ceremony. They just slapped a wooden plaque into my sweaty, gu-smeared arms at the finish and that was that. No restaurant gift card? No certificate to a running store?? I've been spoiled by past Columbus races, so I was a little bummed by the sparse nature of the reward for my efforts, but I suppose such things keep me humble. | 6:35 6:36 6:39 6:36 6:35 6:32 6:36 6:34 6:36 6:39 6:51 7:20 6:33 0:42 1:27:28 |