Drove down to SA on Saturday. Straight to the Expo (parking sucked, and it was freaking cold as hell walking to the stadium - on the positive side, the TomTom pronounced it A-llama-dome, which was freaking hillarious!!). Expo was seriously crowded, and I thought packet pick-up was poorly layed-out with lines criss-crossing everywhere. I had always heard that there were good freebies at expos, but I didn't see any here. Booked it out of there quickly. Oh, one other negative - cotton t-shirts! I'm turning into a tech t snob. Don't even bother if it is cotton, especially if you are catering to a crowd that is running long!
Anyways, after that we checked into the hotel, Staybridge Suites at Sunset Station, which was really really nice except for the price and the trains blowing their horns all night long... very nice that it was walking distance from the finish line, though. I'd recommend it, with earplugs.
Walked over to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which is apparently like a total institution in San Antonio, and I have to say, based on what I ate, with good reason. Preston was super excited about eating there. I was trying to be a bit careful and not upset my stomach the night before a long run, so I tried to eat less than I normally would, and it worked quite well.
Then headed back to the hotel, watched a movie, and crashed around 8pm. And woke up off and on with train whistles all night long...
Woke up on Sunday at 5. Drank my coffee, ate a banana, and couldn't really force anything else down. Had a grumpy stomach, but was able to stick around in the hotel room for long enough (6:20) to settle it. I had a hard time deciding what to wear. It was supposed to be in the 30's on race morning, but rising into the 60's before the end of the race. I knew I'd be cold at the beginnins, and I brought cold clothes, but I didn't want to throw any away and I knew I'd be in sleeveless by the end. Finally decided on shorts, sleeveless, covered by two layers of long-sleeved tech that I'd pass off to Preston when I saw him on the course. Did have throw-away gloves. Left for the starting line shuttle at 6:20 (really cold outside!!). Arrived in line 6:25. Stood in line til 7:10ish. Arrived at start at 7:25ish. Walked to corral 15 (scheduled for 14, but couldn't find entrance). Stood there and listened to the start. Realized that I had plenty of time to get out of the corral, run to the porta-potty, do my business (no lines!!), and get back into the corral to stand for 15ish more minutes.
Finally I got up to the front, where the announcer guy did a great job of firing me up!! Perhaps too good - first mile was 9:30ish pace, which I think is too fast for comfort at the end... I felt good. Didn't even really look at my Garmin until the first aid station, where I called Preston to tell him I was close, but then I missed him at our first meeting point!! Hells, I tied my shirts around my waist, resigned to running for 6 more miles with them on, boo!! Then I just enjoyed myself for the next several miles, with the exception of that beastly long hill around mile 4,wtf?? The downhill afterward was bang-up awesome, though... Saw Preston at 8.5, again at 9.5ish, and 10.5ish. Really felt quite good til 11, then started to wonder if I'd ever finish... saw the lead marathon woman run by me when we both had 2 miles to go - that really puts it into perspective for you, doesn't it? That woman ran twice as far as me, only about 10 minutes slower than me. I mean, wow. The hill up into the finish line was a bitch, I'm not going to lie. That was somebody's idea of a sadistic joke, and it was soooooo not funny!
The course overall was really quite lovely, ran through some scenic areas of town, past the Alamo, and all of that. I'd be interested to run the marathon course that continued onto mission trail too...
After the finish line was another small grumbly... there were only 5 photo booths set up, and no way to bypass them. I was standing in this sea of thousands of people who were going nowhere, and I was cramping up really bad, with no ability to walk it off!! Finally one of the photogs started letting people walk through. Bad set-up, though, really. And no finisher's shirts, boo!! Medals are super nice, though, and heavy! Lots of variety in the finish foods.
Little trouble finding Preston in the sea of people, and still fighting cramping in my legs, so I headed back to the hotel, where he found me. After I cleaned up, he took my to my very favorite San Antonio/Austin eatery: EZ's Brick Oven and Grill. They have stellar cheese fries and oreo cookie shakes, and their Rosemary Chicken is the BEST EVAR. And I ate all of that. And took another shake to go for the drive home!
All in all, I enjoyed my first big event. The crowd support was really cool. I could tell that it was an inaugural event - the race organizers have a few things to work out (shuttles, photo booths, etc), but it was a neat-o event that I enjoyed!
Overall time: 2:14:21. A new PR!
Oh, yeah, the 2:15 pacers were right in front of me in my corral. They went out fast, so I kept thinking they'd come back to me if I just ran my race (I really wanted a 2:10ish), but they never did. Oh well...
The Garmin actually registered 13.33 miles for the half. There were so many turns in the course, maybe that is where I picked up the mileage. I tried not to do much weaving...
Garmin splits to come. Overall I ran this race more evenly than the Houston Half or the HMSA 25K, and I'm really happy about that. Next up, Dallas Turkey Trot. I'm really looking forward to it - it is only 8 miles, so I figure I can really try to put the pedal to the metal for it. When I hit 8 yesterday, I thought to myself, "At the Turkey Trot, this will be the end - how cool is that??"
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