Snake River Half Marathon

Well as expected I did not set the world on fire at this years race. I did however do a little better than I expected. First let me set the scene a little. The Hobbit an I left Spokane at 0730, because he was late,again. Then we had to stop because his bowels make most of his decisions. So we get there with 15-20 min. to kill. This time is needed to go through the gym bag and find just the right combination of warmth/wind protection. I had a few options and if you ever run this race you'll want to make sure you have a few options too. It was a about 24 degrees with a biting wind. As it turned out this year we started the race running into the wind. The wind speed was between 10-15 mph with some gusts a little higher. This is just a guess by I've read that for there to be white caps on a body of water you have to have at least 15 mph winds, and I saw white caps. I did run this race caveman style. Which was kind of a pain not really knowing what your splits were. I did asked this guy what time we were at a few times during the race. And they had someone calling out the time at the 1st mile, kind of dumb really, half way would have made sense but 1 mile into a 13 mile race???? at any rate my 1st mile was 7:23. The guy said at 4 miles we were right at 32 at 9 miles ~1:08. From that point on I just ran. The wind was helping now but it had died down quite a bit. But I could feel it pushing me. I was really focusing on my cadence and my breathing. I only got passed by 1 guy on the way back, more about him later. I was trying to constantly reel people in that were out in front of me. With 1 mile left I really started to pick up the pace. If I had to guess I would say the last mile was run at about 6:50 pace. So with about 100 yds to go I passed that guy back that had passed me. However with about 50 ft to go he sprinted back in front of me. I tried to answer but I was to little to late. The clock at the finish shows me crossing at 1:40:22, but they have me listed at 1:40:20, whatever.











oh yea and the Hobbit did beat me, bastard. And we had to stop on the way home too.