Bearathon

I ran the "Bearathon" yesterday. It's a half-marathon put on by Baylor's Student Foundation. I don't know that I would have run it 2 weeks from the marathon, but there aren't a whole lot of races that are longer than 5k's in Waco, so I decided to go ahead and run. Also, as students at Baylor, Regina and I were members of Student Foundation. It's a neat organization and the money raised goes towards funding scholarships for current students.

It was my best half-marathon time of the "season" - 1:46:45. (If you look at the results, you've got to search- I couldn't figure out how to link directly to my results.

It's a tough course, as it goes through Cameron Park and its challenging hills. It had to changed in the last few days due to a sinkhole that developed on University Parks in the rain last weekend. (Sorry, I couldn't find an article with a picture.) Instead, it was routed across the Washington Ave. bridge, along the new river trail on the MLK side of the river and back across the Herring bridge. If you look at the course map, though, they forgot the key point that when you travel across the bridge, you actually do go across the river...

Anyway, it was nice running through a town that I knew and on streets that I recognized. Regina and the kids didn't make it to the start, but they made their way to find me several times. I think Regina appreciated the much smaller crowd (340 runners, as opposed to close to 10,000) and streets that she knew, as well. It was fun seeing all four of them 5 or 6 times as I ran. Regina forgot the camera, though, so no pics. Sorry!

I ran a good deal of the time with a local celebrity, Stuart Smith. He has the distinction of being the first American to complete the Adventure Grand Slam. Needless to say, he's an interesting man to talk to. He had more in the tank and left me behind with about a mile and a half left and finished about a minute ahead of me.

Anyway, I was pleased with how even my splits were. The three slow ones in the middle were the toughest of the hills in the park-

Mile 1- 7:56
Mile 2- 7:59
Mile 3- 7:52
Mile 4- 8:01
Mile 5- 8:01
Mile 6- 8:36
Mile 7- 8:40
Mile 8- 8:30
Mile 9- 8:00
Mile 10- 7:57
Mile 11- 8:00
Mile 12&13- 16:21 (forgot to hit my split timer, but there was a stiff head wind for the last 3 miles or so. It really started to wear on me at the end.)
last .1- 0:49

Next Saturday, I'll run the Waco 1-0. It's a 10 miler on the trails of Cameron Park (I'll leave the 50 km race to others), so it will be much different than the road races I've done, but I'm looking forward to it. After that, I'll take a break (and give Regina a break) from the race scene. I'll keep running, though, if anyone wants to join me!