USA Fit Half Marathon Race Report

I really don't feel like writing this race report.  I don't know why.  One would say I had a good race.  Nothing went wrong.  But let's start from the beginning shall we.

     For a retail runner I had an awesome day before my race.  Meaning I didn't have to work!  There is some sort of sickness going around my staff so I had to cover shifts and go in on my day off last week.  This lead to me being able to be off work on Saturday, so I was able to sit around and rest my legs all day.  Off to a good start already!  Sunday morning the alarm went off at at 4am.  Jeff and I got out of bed, got dressed, had some coffee and a bagel with peanut butter. We walked out to the car and it was slightly drizzling.  Not ideal, but workable for sure.  The race site was about 43 miles from our house, and with each passing the mile the drizzle turned into rain, which turned into a downpour.  Not ideal, at this point I am thinking not workable either.  I really wanted to turn around and go home, but we paid for the race, and as Jeff pointed out, even if we went home we both still needed to get a long run in.  So we decided to stay.  Not to mention the traffic control at this event was horrible!!  It would have taken us twice as long to get out of the place as it would have for us to stay and run.
     We  had about 30 mins to the SCHEDULED start of the race.  I made a quick sprint for the bathrooms, then came back to the car to get Jeff so we could head to the starting line.  We took our pre race nutrition and headed out.  Just about the time we got there an announcement was  that due to the traffic STILL trying to get in the parking lot they were going to be delaying the race 15 mins. UGGG!  There wasn't really any place to get shelter from the rain, so we headed back to the car to wait it out.  We were about to head back to the start, we saw some more people heading back to their cars.  Come to find out the race was being delayed another 30 mins.  What to do now.....  while waiting we watched some videos on my awesome EVO.  If you haven't seen this check it out.  Click HERE
    With, what we think is about 10 mins to the new start time we head over to the bathrooms.  As soon as we walked up to the line we heard the starting gun go off.  WTF???  Most of the people in line sprinted out, but Jeff and I decided to stay.  I really had to pee!  By the time we made it to the start 4.5 minutes have passed.
     So finally the race has begun!  Jeff and I were off and running.  My race plan was to treat this race more of a training run.  I have the Houston Marathon in two weeks (deep breath) and I didn't want to push too hard this race and risk injury.  After weaving in and out of people for about the first mile I felt myself in a pretty good groove.  My Garmin was showing an average pace of 9:22.  I was happy with this and running in the rain wasn't so bad.  At about mile 5 I was feeling pretty good so I decided to pick it up a little bit (Granted, I had Ruth Ann, one of my training partners in my head the whole time telling me to take it easy).  I mean, I was running a race after all.  (I don't have the splits right now as Garmin Connect is down)  At about mile 8 I was still feeling awesome, but had to stop to stretch my left quad, so I decided to take it down a notch again.  Then again at mile 10 I wanted to push some, but my quad was still bothering me, so I kept it slow.  I started running along side a guy who was running the full, and we chatted for the next two miles.  About mile 12 I realized I might not beat my time from this race last year, so I kicked it in for a strong finish, and even chicked a couple guys.  I still missed my time from last year, by two minutes.    Here are the results

Results:
Overall time:  2:04:26
Avg Pace:  9:30
Overall: 206/1240
Age grp: 38/302

     So yes, overall I had a good race.  I stuck to my race plan.  My nutrition was spot on.  But I know I could have done better so I am a little frustrated.  Crazy right???  Hopefully this will pay off for me in two weeks!!