Zooma Half-Marathon Report

Zooma: in short, not as good (feeling) as Austin but not horrible like Houston.  It was my worst time since my very first half marathon: 2:41:35.  Sheesh, I'm slow.

Who could have predicted that a race in April would be 20 degrees cooler than a race in January or February; however, I was very thankful for the 48 degree start temperature (it was high 60s by the time we finished). 

The race organization was pretty fantastic.  My mom and I parked at an airport parking lot and a bus drove us to the Hyatt Lost Pines.  We arrived around 6:30, leaving us a good 45 minutes to just wander around (read: find a bathroom with no line) and explore the resort.  It's very pretty - even in the dark.

The race started right on time - at 7:30 - there were about 1,500 participants (the smallest half marathon I've ever raced).  My mom and I decided to try our Austin strategy again - start out slow and get slower.  

It took a couple of miles for my fingers and toes to warm up, but by water station #2 my mom and I had discarded our disposable layer of clothes. 

I'm not gonna lie - there were lots and lots of hills.  Some were pretty steep and long - strangely enough the downhill just never felt as good as the uphill felt icky.  The course was very pretty, but there's one thing I really hated about it - there were many (at least four) out and back places on course where you see the people who are faster coming towards you.  I guess this is only really a problem for slow people.  The only thing I found myself thinking is - where is the turn around? 

My mom and I ran the first five or six miles together and then I went ahead for a little while.  New term created by my mom: "Bunny Me".  As in, "run ahead of me for a little while and be my pace bunny."  Then she caught up and then I went ahead again.  

During the times when I was ahead of my mom, I'd try to find her when I was running the "back" part of the out and back sections of the race.  There were a lot of blond women wearing pink tops and black shorts and I yelled "Hi Mom" followed by "Oops sorry, you're not my mom." at about five confused looking runners.   

When I finished, I was glad to be done.  Sadly, the water and food were not very close to the finish line - but I grabbed two waters and went back to the finish line to wait for my mom.  When she finished we found the food and headed back to the buses to go home.

Overall - pretty fun race, but I probably should have trained a little better for the hills. 

Here's a picture of Cub today, I call it "Grumpy Justin Bieber Baby".