Erie Half Marathon

Each fall race season, I like to kick things off with a half marathon. Half marathons are great, because just when it starts to suck…it’s over! Except with Erie this year…when it starts to suck, you still have a looooong way to go.

At 5 AM on race day, it was already 80 degrees and the humidity really bad. Now you would think that I would take that into consideration and adjust my goal of trying to break 1:30. Noooooo. Why would I do that???

I still managed to finish. That, in itself, was an accomplishment. I seriously have not been that close to hanging things up in a race without actually quitting. My real goal for the day was to mark the half marathon off my 2008 PR list, which I did. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t the only person out there hurting I guess….I managed to place 23rd out 456 finishers (not sure how many dropped) and 3rd in my age group. Even got a little lighthouse trophy with my name on it!

But the real kicker for the day was to find out one of my running buddies, Rose, has a brother who was actually a friend of mine in college when I was a freshman. After my freshman year, I had lost track of him. How cool is that??? We actually just stood there for a while laughing and scratching our heads and looking at Rose wondering how we this was possible.

“It’s a small, small world. But I wouldn’t want to paint it.” –Steven Wright