Half Marathon #6 for 2014: Riverboat Series Day 3 – Arkansas

Riverboat Series Half Marathon -Arkansas
April 14, 2014
2:24:22

Temp: low 60s and damp at the start, torrential downpours at the end
What I wore: hat, short sleeve shirt, Skirt Sports Happy Girl skirt,
PROCompression socks, and my trusty Altra Intuitions

How shall I describe this race?  Never.a.dull.moment.

We started the day by following Google map’s directions to the start.  Their directions involved gravel roads on the levee, big puddles, and cows standing mere inches from the road. Thankfully, Beer Geek grew up driving on roads like that, so we beat the GPS time by 3 minutes.  (If I’d been driving, we’d still be out there…)  The race only got better from there…

The course was a 1.31 loop that half marathoners had to do 10 times.  It was mostly flat and the only “difficulty” was avoiding the big puddles from the previous night’s storms.  For the first 6 laps, I was right on pace and slowly but surely getting too warm.  Then the wind picked up and the temp started to drop.  As I headed out on my 9th lap, it went from threatening rain to all out downpour.  I’ve run in heavy rain before, but this rain was accompanied by lightning and thunder.  Of course, I’d ditched my hat earlier in the race, so I had to run lap 9 with water threatening to wash my contacts right out of my eyes.  Thankfully, I was able to grab my hat for the last lap, but perhaps I’d have been better off grabbing flippers!  I knew they were considering pulling us off the course, so I was booking it to the turnaround so that I could finish.  The back half of the course was about 6 inches deep in flowing water, so that lap was challenging!

You can see the weather progression in my changing outfits:

Chilly at the start:

Warming up a bit:

Getting too warm and ditched the hat (at which point Beer Geek told a bystander “Every time she runs by she takes off something and hands it to me. At this rate, she’ll be running naked at the end.”)

And then it started to pour, so I grabbed my hat again:

And finally I finished! Sopping wet, but happy!

The good:

• The course was paved and mostly flat.
•  I ran with the same friend as the day before for a while + you get a little slap happy when you are practically swimming with 90 of your favorite runners.

The bad:

• Losing the hairband that held my braid meant a wet ponytail flopping around for the rest of the race.

The ugly:

• The lightning! that was right.there.
• The downpour.
• Puddles deeper than my shoes.
• The crazy drive to get there!

Make sure to enter my 5 things giveaway for the five half marathons in five days!!!

3 down, 2 to go!

Race 1 recap: Kentucky

Race 2 recap: Tennessee