For Whom the Dogs Bark

34F, clear and cold.  This was not supposed to be a race report today, just a run with my son and soak in the atmosphere.  My time reflects it, a full 13 minutes slower than my previous half in Phoenix a month ago.  The plan was to run at about an 11:00 pace to ensure that he finished.  He came up lame early in the race, bad shin splints.  We tried walking about a half-mile but he only got worse, so I sent him back and finished it by myself.  By that time there was no hope of getting a good time, not to mention the fact that I have been recovering from my own injury and don't have the conditioning to run well -- even if I did I wouldn't want to push it hard for fear of re-injury.  Still, I ran as fast as I could given the sudden change of plans.  I don't have mile splits because the memory in my Garmin filled up halfway through the race.  That was also frustrating.  The race results show me doing quite a bit better overall (1892/4753) than in my age group (114/197).  The same thing happened in Phoenix.  I need a new age group. 

One good thing, I don't appear to be having any trouble recovering.  No lingering pains or stiffness of any note, even though I hopped into a small car immediately after the race and drove all the way back to Houston.  I figured I would need to be manhandled out of the automobile, but I was fine.  Secondly, I ran negative splits -- toward the end of the race I was approaching my previous pace, so I am probably going to be OK.  Finally, due to my hopeless position when I started running, I must have passed over a thousand people -- I improved by about 700 places just from the 10K mat to the end.  I was almost never around anybody who was running my speed.

A couple of interesting things happened.  I was following a group of runners for a while with blue t-shirts that said "The Pine Cove Team".  I wondered where that could be.  All of a sudden this neighborhood we were in went crazy, and the blue boys started high-fiving and body-bumping everybody.  Obviously, we had entered Pine Cove.  Good thing I waited to pass them.

Also, some course confusion, if that is possible in a race this big.  The marathon and half-marathon groups ran together for about 8 miles and some change.  Then at about mile 11 there was old man questioning some officials about where the courses split.  He said "I am in the marathon".  Pretty sad, I'm pretty sure he didn't finish his race.  And the kids 5-k turned into a 1.8 mile race because a cop on a motorcycle stopped to direct traffic, everybody ran the wrong way and nobody stopped them -- wonder how they found their way back.  Lots of chaos today, 21,000 people in a relatively small area created some tough logistics before, during and after.

Here's to better races.