Race #124 - New River Half Marathon - Todd, NC - 05/07/11

How do I walk thee? Let me count the ways. To say I walked a lot in this race is an understatement. I'm not sure I strung together a solid mile of running throughout the entire race. Hills are not completely unexpected when you travel into the North Carolina mountains for a race, but I've got a short memory and I could almost swear there was something to the effect of "flat and fast" on the New River Marathon website. There was quite a bit of discussion along with some of the other Gaston County Runners as we talked about how mountainous it might be. The elevation map only showed a couple of sizable hills in the first half of the race, not nearly so daunting as those in the second half, so I figured it would be a piece of cake. Uh... not so much. Although we did follow basically the same route that the full marathon course took, in order to stretch out the mileage to 13.1 we needed  to veer off onto some side roads that just happened to be built on the sides of mountains, thus resulting in a roller coaster with both steep uphills and downhills like I have seldom seen.

Note:  This is so not cool, but about two days after I completed this masterpiece and published it, for some reason it was inadvertently deleted from Blogger and they reverted back to my first draft, which only included the paragraph above. Life goes on, and there's no way I'm going back to rewrite it. I figure if anybody was that interested they would have read it in the first couple days before it was deleted. I'll re-do the rating and provide links to the results and photos, and put this thing out of its misery right here.


Click Here for Race Results for Marathon, Half Marathon, and 5k


Click Here for Race Photos from RMO Photography


Race Rating:

9 - 1-10  Website (Information, results, registration, photo links, etc.)
4 - 1-10  Awards (Quality of medals, trophies, etc.) (1 to 10)
8 - 1-10  Awards Presentation (PA system, winning times, etc.) (1 to 10)
4 - 1-10  Food for Race Participants (1 to 10)
10 - 1-10  T-Shirts (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
4 - 4/6   Part of Race Series (Grand Prix, etc.) (6=Yes and 4=No)
5 - 0/5   Professional Photography (5=Yes and 0=No)
6 - 4/6   Chip Timing (6=Yes and 4=No)
7 - 3/7   Certified Course (by USA Track & Field) (7=Yes and 3=No)
7 - 1-10  Course (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
8 - 1-10  Parking (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
8 - 1-10  Entertainment (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
0 - 0-10  Age Groups (10 if 5-year groups; 0 if 10-year groups)
0 - 0/5   Indoor Shelter from Elements (0 if none; 5 if provided)
8 - 1-10  Bathroom Facilities
0-10  Other

TOTAL - 88

My Stats:

Time:  1:46:37
Pace:  8:07
Age Group (50-59):  4 of 27 (14.8%)
Overall:  43 of 432 (10%)

Comments

  1. KenMay 12, 2011 at 2:05 PM

    Richard,

    The next time you're in the area, try Smoky Mountain Barbecue in West Jefferson. An Ashe County native has informed me that they have delicious barbeque and reasonable prices.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 27, 2011 at 11:23 AM

    What a fantastic time you had on this race! I think this was the hardest race I have ever completed. At the 10K mark a spectator said "It is mostly flat to the finish line." This pumped me up, then I saw the hill on 194 right outside of the Todd General Store. After cresting the hill I told myself, "I will never run again! 16 years of running is enough." Of course, I changed my mind, as the last 5K was beautiful and I made a new running friend. Your blog is such an inspiration! ~ Avid follower Carly, age 30

    ReplyDelete

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