2013 Colfax Half Marathon - Denver - May 19 - Part 1 (Sorry It's Gotta Be in Phases)

Twas not a good day to be running.

At least not for me.  But it got done and it wasn't a PW.  I'm actually shocked.

This was by far the hardest half marathon course I have ever run.  Ever.

That's not to say that I wasn't trained OK enough...but I grossly underestimated the difference in elevation between where I live in Nebraska to the elevation there in Denver...they don't call it the Mile High city for nothing I can tell you that much.

Maybe I have figured out that its OK to not be so hard on ones self, and that times at any given race just aren't that darn important. Once I got injured in early 2012 and with the move, and all of that, I got tired of judging myself all the time and not celebrating the fact that I am soon to be 50 years old and I feel grateful that I can still do what I do.

Attitude is everything.  Shift from a place of its never enough to a place of I have everything I need.

In a way I am a bit disappointed but not terribly bad. A year or so ago, yeah, but again I didn't estimate the diff AND the fact that while this course is touted as flat, it's not. There were just little types at the beginning but man once you hit a certain spot in the course, its worse; at least for someone like me! It was like Central Park is but for the whole way it seemed.

And normally you think oh an uphill, I get a downhill? Nope. It would just flatten out before it started again.

The worse was once we turned to head back towards the finish, around mile 9; the sun had come out and it was hot.

It would have been so much better if the skies had stayed cloudy! It was warm at the start...55ish I guess...

Jeez that's a whole lot of nothing; random thoughts put together to form a blog post?  I think not...

Let's start over...

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As in let's start back at the beginning shall we??  (Note:  due to time I am going to have to split this thing up into sections; otherwise no one may ever know about the race :O)

I had booked a hotel 'close' to the Start/Finish, and while it WAS close, it wasn't as close as I thought.  So that morning after 2 cups of coffee and a Pop Tart, I headed out. 

To walk to the Start.  I left about 10 min to 6 and the race (half) started at 7 (the full started at 6).  Based on where I thought I was in connection to the Start, I figured this gave me plenty of time to get there, potty and get in my corral.

 Wrong. 
Wrong.
Wrong.

As I was walking along I could hear the hoopla off in the distance and it kept me thinking 'Oh I'm close'.

Wrong again.

I could hear the makings out of the Star Spangled Banner and then the gun signaling the Start of the marathon.

Kept walking.

Then after a while I started to think I had somehow missed the turn.  There was only one so I was confused.  Maybe the locals knew one street as being named something else?  Finally I saw a lady sitting on her porch and asked her. 

Nope still had a ways.  I looked at my Garmin. 
It was almost 6:30.

Shit fire.To make a long story short instead of the other way around, I ended up walking 2.5 miles BEFORE the actual race.

I got there with barely enough time to stand in the lines to potty.  I knew that each corral was about 1.5 min apart and I was in G.

I just made it.  I didn't actually make it to G since getting through the crowd was hard without making anyone mad but I did make it to H.  :O)

In the back of my mind I was concerned about the long walk there beforehand but figured, eh it would be OK.  And of course I had brought my debit card with me to use for a cab after...

To be continued...