Neuse River Bridge Run Half Marathon Race Report -- part 1

I had everything carefully organized for the race

 I ran my last warm up run on Wednesday after work.  My intention was to run a shakeout run on Friday morning, but the Wednesday run went so bad that I decided to just rest up till race day.  Wednesday, had been a humid day with dark clouds hanging around threatening to rain but refusing to just get it over with.  I hadn't wanted to run, but after work I started crawling the walls making making both myself and Hiroko crazy.  My plan was to run an easy five miler, but I began to have stomach cramps after the first mile, and the rest of the run became more of a walk/run horror show that I shortened to just over 3 miles.  After I finished, I didn't let this disaster of a run effect me mentally.  In fact, I shrugged it off rather easily.  It was a bad run, nothing more.  I had faith in my training and where I was at in way of my conditioning.  However, I did decided to skip my Friday shakeout and just give myself some extra rest.



Unaware that most of this stuff isn't working right

Hiroko and I traveled down to New Bern Friday afternoon in order to get settled in at the hotel and attend the mini race expo.  We picked up our race packets, shirts, had a brief look around, and then joined the pre-race pasta dinner.  I was beginning to get nervous and couldn't wait for the race to start.  We didn't stick around the expo long after eating; instead Hiroko and I walked around historic New Bern for a little bit before returning to the hotel to get ready for the next morning.  Hiro was running in the 5k, which began an hour after teh half Marathon started, so we coordinated out game plan for the morning and I laid out all of my gear for the coming day.

I wanted to make sure not be to scrambling in the morning to find something.  My only desire was to get to the line as relaxed as possible.  We went to bed at a decent hour, and I slept well.  The morning started out well -- I got up on time, my stomach didn't give me any complaints, and my nerves were alright.  The starting line was just in front of our hotel, so all I need to do was walk out of the hotel to and join the gathering crowd.  I went out side and waited for Hiro to go back upstairs for her jacket because the air was still a little chilly.  Right then the wheel came off -- I turned on Old Bob and waited for a signal and immediately realized something was wrong when the low power warning came on.  I had charged him the day before, but during the car ride the button must have gotten pressed.  I hadn't checked the power because I knew that I had charged him.  I quickly came to the decision that I would be running my first Half Marathon by feel alone.  Next, I turned on my I-pod hoping to settle my frayed nerves, but this only made matters worse as my I-pod was blasting my music through it external speaker, despite the fact that my ear buds were plugged in correctly.  Had my Garmin been working, I would have had no problem just chucking the I-pod, but the I-pod was now the only thing I had to help me calculate my speed, and I was determined to get it to work.  Hiroko was trying to help me, but by this time I was in full on freak-out.  I messed around with my I-pod as I moved to the starting line, and It wasn't until about 5 minutes before the start that remember how to re-boot the damn thing and got it working.

there I go in my Raiders cap and red shit



Lesson Learned:  CHECK EVERYTHING!  ROOKIE MISTAKE!

 I attempted to not to go completely bananas at the idea of running the race be feel, but, honestly, I was a mess.  I just wanted to start the race before anything else could go wrong.  My wish came quickly, as the three minutes that I had to kill once I joined the other runners at the started, just ticked away quickly without passion or prejudices.  And . . . after the having exact type of morning that I had wanted to avoid, I was off.  As I start to run, I told myself that I was just going to have to focus on running -- nothing more.   I had trained too hard and invested too much in this race to not enjoy it.  I settled down with the knowledge that race day was finally here, and as I passed Hiroko, I shouted to her that I would see her in two hours.