State-to-State # 8

I ran the 8th annual State-to-State Half-Marathon on Sunday, Sept. 26. I have to keep doing them to keep up the streak. It is far from my favorite race but maybe someday I can be the last woman or even the last person from the inaugural race still running it. Maybe they will give me some kind of really cool recognition or prize. And that is really the main reason I keep showing up every year because it is not that great of a race, and if it didn't fit my schedule as a training run there are plenty of other things I could do with my time (like usually a dog agility trial).

I just wanted to get it done and recorded and not push too much since after all I did have that marathon to look forward to less than a week later. Had a bit of stress getting to the race this year because Tommy was out of town and I had to make sure the dogs were taken care of. Decided not to bother walking them beforehand. Was almost cool enough that I could have brought them along and left them in the car, but decided they were better off at home. Worst case scenario was I would have to clean up some poop, and even that was unlikely. They are good dogs.

Anyway, did get there a little later than usual so as not to leave the dogs for too long, and did have to park a little farther away than usual, but no biggie. The race shirt was a bit nicer this year---long sleeve, technical top. It's white but at least the hideous race logo is small for a change.

One funny thing but all too typical for the somewhat scattered organization at this race---they had run out of pins by the time I arrived to pick up my number. They sent somebody out to Walmart to get some more. A little while later when I checked back at the registration table, they handed me two gigantic baby diaper-style pins. Note to self: always bring a set of pins along to the race just in case.

Sunny but cool and windy weather, certainly not the worst I've experienced at this race. Overall time was about the same as last year, just a hair slower. I was actually faster until mile 8, then slowed down a lot in the last five miles. This did not bode well for the upcoming marathon. I could tell myself I was taking it easy but we know the truth.

One thing new at this race is we were interupted by a train in the first mile. Apparently the race committee was unable to get the transportation company to change their train schedule this year. I made it across the track before the train, but some did not. This was the closest I have ever come to getting run over by a train, but I was not letting it get in the way of my race.

Here are the splits:
1) 9:56
2) 10:11
3) 10:02
4) 10:07
5) 9:55
6) 9:45
7) 11:06
8) 9:42
9) 11:16
10) 11:30
11) 12:01
12) 11:20
13.1) 12:21

So you can clearly see that the wheels did come off after mile 8. Or maybe it was even earlier than that. I'm not really trained to go farther than a 10k. But I do.

My official time was 2:19:10.7, which put me 390 of 513 overall and 5 of 8 in my age group. Creeping up in the age group through attrition!