I r ti-erd…

Still tired. Must … keep … going. That’s what I was thinking at about mile 11 of the half marathon I ran this past weekend. To say that the course had a couple hills is like saying the Battle of Gettysburg had a few deaths. Holy Smack! That course was hillier than Little Rock. There wasn’t a time that I wasn’t going up or down a hill. There were very few flat spots. Anyway, the folks over at Marathon Makeover put together a real first class event. This was their first organized race. You could tell that everyone worked really hard and it was great to see the city of Ridgeland, MS really pull out all of the stops to host the event.

There were 820 registered runners, but according to the official results, only 743 competed. I came in at 335th place with a time of 2:20:45. My only goal was to improve upon my Little Rock Half Marathon time, which I did by about 1 minute. I’ll take that considering the hills didn’t even start in LR until about mile 8 or 9. In the Renaissance at Colony Park Half Marathon, the hills started at about mile 1.3. So, I got worn out a bit quicker in MS than AR. I hit the wall around mile 10 or 10.5. From there on out it was just me trying to push as much as I could and let one leg fall in front of the other. You would be surprised at how much hills really can take it out of you. Chicago was all flat, and aside from running out of water early on, it was pretty easy (as courses go). The Renaissance kicked my tail. If they do it again next year, I’ll probably go, but I’ll know what to expect.

Here’s the course:

Up next: Maybe a half marathon in Conway later this year.