Marathon de Mayo

This Sunday in Reno was a pretty cool event; the Marathon de Mayo. It's cool in that it starts (and ends) right downtown, under the Reno Arch, and goes on city streets that I drive on all the time. In fact, the race course passes right by the house that Nathan and Sarah are remodeling right now - I saw Nathan's truck on the way by, but didn't see him. Anyway, I did the half marathon - 13.1 miles. I did this same race last year, and didn't train very much for it - I think I ran three miles twice the week before the race. I think my time was in the 2 hours 15-20 minute range - I had been trying to break 2 hours, but didn't make it. I'm in much better shape this year, and decided to just try to break two hours again, and see how things went. Well, the course didn't have a lot of mile markers, so I could only tell that I was on 8 minute mile pace up through mile 5. The second half of the race was overall downhill, though, and I ended up finishing in 1:39 - almost 7:30 mile pace, and I knocked a half an hour off last year's time! Ended up 35th overall, and 7th in my age division (30-34). Pretty happy with the way that turned out...

Wasn't so happy with the race organization - the race started and hour and 20 minutes late, due to some problems with getting the streets closed. Last year it started 30 minutes late, for similar reasons. It's really frustrating to have planned your nutrition, sleep schedule, clothes and gear all around a specific start time, just to have to stand around in the cold waiting for someone to get their act together. And 2000 people in that same situation is even worse... I think I'll do this race again next year, but if it happens again, I'm done with it.

And I wrote a letter to the editor of the Reno Gazette Journal regarding the late start - take a look.