My Soggy Half Marathon

So Sunday I ran the US Half Marathon through the nicest parts of San Francisco and inadvertently participated in a wet t-shirt flash mob. After weeks of sunny days, mother nature decided to rain exactly during my half marathon. It was 13.1 miles of pouring rain. The course itself was great because it was a longer version of the Presidio 10 I did this spring. There's always a rush you get out of running across the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, if I had windshield wipers on my glasses I would have gotten that rush, otherwise I could only see about ten feet in front of me. The rain was a pain in the ass in other ways as well. It added another five pounds of weight on me both in the form of wet clothes and wet shoes. The clothes got bad in mile 10 when my shorts began to slide off me and I had to periodically pull them up. And whenever I would step into a puddle, my shoes would get waterlogged. Oh, and at mile 4, my iPod gave out so I just running with no tunes.

On the plus side, I didn't have have problems with overheating or getting thirsty. And surprisingly, I has plenty of kick for the end. I am surprised I didn't just cramp up with being wet and cold but I didn't.

Being a wet, sodden mess, I was happy to just finish the race. In the end, I did just fine. I finished in 2 hours, 9 minutes and 59 seconds for a pace of 9:56/mile. That placed me firmly in the middle of the pack - 1292 out of 2976 runners and 316 out of 499 male runners between the ages of 30-39.

Three days later, I'm feeling pain free and am looking forward to running a 10K with my family on Thanksgiving Day.