I’m happy to report that my participation in the Miami Half-Marathon was a complete success. No dehydration. No light headiness. No passing out. No hospitals. My official time was 2:29:18 and my net time was 2:25:16. I’m pleased with my time especially since my target time was 2:30. After the race I felt great, a bit drained and hungry, but great. I’ve got to hand it to the event organizers the course was phenomenal. We ran by the Port of Miami, which was loaded with large cruise ships. I got really excited running down Ocean Drive. Collegiate memories started pouring into my head when we turned down the storied drive. Lucy and I had our first date there you know. Running along the rest of the Beach was nice but uneventful.
About mile seven I kicked it up a bit and by mile eight I ran into one of the two training groups I trained with. It was the faster one by the way. I said hey to a couple of people and let them run on since I hit a walk interval. A few miles later, I passed one of the women in the group; she was stretching at the side of the road. I asked if she was OK and she acknowledged that she was. As the race wore on, we kept passing each other since our intervals were off. Around mile twelve I stopped again and asked if she was really OK. She was alone, which I thought was really weird. Every training run, the Turkey Trot and the Palmetto Bay 15K she was running with another guy in the group. Oddly enough this was the first time I’ve seen her run by herself. She said she was tight and couldn’t keep up with the group. She told the guy to continue on since he kept pushing her to move faster. A guy pushes a girl to do something she can’t/won’t do? Ya, that never happens. Anyways, I walked mile twelve with her made sure she was OK before I suggested that we jog out the last mile. She agreed and before I knew it we were approaching the finish line. I sprinted home. We both made it within 2:30.
Which leads me to a bit of a rant, logistically this was a lousy race. Even though I only have Disney to compare it to, they could have done some things better. The packet pick up had too many points to hit. You had to find your name and number out of the 14,000 runners. You had to fill out a card. You had one table to pick up your bib and another to pick up your chip. It was too confusing. The corrals were disorderly. The finish line didn’t have any thermal wraps. The food at the finish line was scattered all around. Worst of all the chip removal area was a disaster. They had everyone bottleneck into one line. Ridiculous.
Even with these issues I had a great time. The weather was perfect and the course was great. I'm definitely going to run again next year. Maybe I'll try the full.