Heels and Hills and Him Half Marathon Race Report

Sunday's Heels and Hills and Him Half Marathon in Irving isn't the first race that I've ever participated in that I wasn't ready for and it is likely that it won't be the last either.

This was a race that was supposed to have been run on the first Sunday in May; however, the storm that destroyed the Dallas Cowboys training facility also cancelled the event. In most cases, that would have been money lost. But race directors Libby Jones and Paula Robertson allowed runners to move that entry to a fall half marathon that they had on the calendar.

This half marathon, my 62nd finish at this distance, was also not the first one that I hadn't handicapped myself just a little bit.

On Friday, I drove from Spring to Arkadelphia, Arkansas for the Matters of the hEEEart 5K on the campus of Ouachita Baptist University. It was an afternoon event.

After the race, I traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana - with dinner at IHOP in Texarkana in between - for Saturday's Captain Shreve Gator Run 5K #9.

Then, I drove from Shreveport to Houston for the HARRA Cross Country Relay - no, I didn't run, but might have if asked - and then drove north again to Irving.

So you might be able to say that I was a little tired. :)

The race was to start at 7:30 a.m., I believe. I was on-site and parked in the parking garage at Williams Square in Irving no later than 6:30 a.m. It was already humid and the temperatures were expected to rise into the mid-80s.

I immediately went to where packet pickup was (the other garage at the other end) and I got thrown my first curve of the morning. The event was using one of the new "flat card" IPICO timing chips. They are flat and have holes - four of them - in the card. Every race that I've ever been to where they have been used, you have taken small orange twist ties - like you put around the garbage bag - and tied the card to your shoelaces.

They didn't have any. You were expected to thread your shoelace through the timing card!

Now OK. You've just finished 13.1 miles on a warm day and the last thing that you want to be trying to do is to bend down, undo your shoelaces, pull the card off and give it to a volunteer. So I took the median approach: I had enough room on the shoelaces that I didn't have to untie it. I took the extra length above the tie, used that to thread through them and knotted it to the shoelaces. But I just thought that it all was an unnecessary exercise.

We're using the same timing chip for the Bill Crews Remission Run 5K. Therefore, it is something that I have on my race director's checklist now.

The two other things, logistically, that I saw that concerned me is that 1.) the line to the port-a-potties could have been redirected to keep the starting line queuing process from being a little convoluted and 2.) with the masses of people, there needed to be a couple of more speakers so that everyone could hear. Those are minor things, but they were big enough that I picked up on them.

The P.A. guy was good except that he could have had a list of names with bib numbers on laminated cards and called out people's names - and a live singer for the National Anthem would have been better than a recording (but I'm a little biased with that opinion).

I knew with the temperatures being up that I couldn't even attempt to click off low 10-minute miles, let alone if I had them in me or not.

The first two miles went fairly easy as I posted time of 10:48.86 and 11:12.52. I saw The Woodlands' Judith Blevins as she began to return from the 1.55-mile turnaround of the 5K. She looked like she was running effortlessly. Me? I knew that this was going to be a long morning.

I was good for the next three miles -- 11:54.46, 12:11.27 and 11:59.43. Then just before the turnaround, things started to get a little bit tougher for me.

Miles 6, 7 and 8 were about the same -- 12:46.50, 12:55.93 and 12:51.93. And at this point, I was probably running about 75% of those miles. If it had been a little cooler, I think these miles would have been a little bit faster.

Miles 9 and 10 were 12:31.32 and 12:48.40.

The last three miles - 14:06.26, 13:58.71 and 14:26.34 - took me over the 2:40 mark -- a place that I really don't like to be at any more. Especially since I rattled off a 2:14 in January and a 2:18 in late March. That seems so far away!

The last tenth of a mile was in 1:05.55 and I finished with a "chip time" of 2:45:37. Ugh! (The official results had a time of 2:45:33. I think I'll go with that!)

The race was run primarily on the Trinity Trails in Irving. Parts of them were shaded and others weren't. There could have been one more water stop so that they could have been spaced at about a one and a half mile interval, but I understand from an RD standpoint why they were placed where they were.

The medals were nice (not that they really mean that much to me, but they are important to some people). There were plenty of post-race fluids, but a little short on any thing other than a banana. Again, it isn't a big deal to me as I've seen everything imaginable in the races that I've run and participated in.

I think that they ought to give all women a half hour head start in this predominantly female event (466 women finished versus 128 men). It was just odd seeing men finish first as they passed us coming in while I was still heading out.

The event gave me a little bit of an idea where I stand. And that's a little off the mark where I normally am, but I know that I have time between here and January. Just have to get the work done.