1/2 Marathon Results

I know, a new posting is far overdue. I just got my laptop back yesterday afternoon. Let me give you my recap of my 1/2 marathon. It sucked. The night before the race, I had this sort of sick feeling in my stomach. I assume that if some day I get sentenced to be executed, I will have that same feeling again. I woke up early the morning of the race and looked out the window. What a joke, the sleet / snow was coming down in a hard diagonal direction. As I drove the 20 minutes to Oshkosh for the race, I went by a number of banks that had signs that displayed the time and temperature. 32 degrees. I got to the registration area and as I was walking around to get my bib number and timing chip, I stepped off the sidewalk and onto the grass which was highly saturated with cold water and both of my shoes were soaked. On to the race. Things started out fine with the race, except that my toes were pretty numb for the first mile. But my first mile was right at 8 minutes. Shortly after the first mile, I got a good side cramp which lasted for the next 3 miles. My 3 mile time was 24 minutes 30 seconds. I was on a great pace, and that got me to thinking that if I had just signed up for the 5K, I would be done. From that point on my mile times continued to decline. And as my mile times declined, my inability to feel my fingers increased. Let me preface this next part of this recap as not being an excuse for my time, but it did happen. At mile 8 there was a train crossing. The race organizers had police in place to hold up all trains for the duration of the race. But after a while, the engineer of the train decided he didn't want to wait for the runners to cross the road and finally just went across anyhow. If I had been 20 seconds faster at the point, I would have beat the train and it wouldn't have been an issue. But as it turns out, I got held up by the train and had to wait about 3 minutes for the train to pass before I could continue my run. I ended up crossing the finish line in 2 hours, 1 minute and 20 seconds. I really wanted to finish in under 2 hours. In the end, I will call it a pretty negative experience. But I am planning on doing another 1/2 marathon. There is one in Oconomowoc in August. And I had told myself that if things went alright that I would do the Twin Cities Marathon in October. I think that the Twin Cities Marathon will be my first and last full marathon. Here is a link to some pictures from the race.