Rock n Roll San Jose Half Sept 27, 2015

Time for part deux of the Remix Challenge!  It was awesome having 2 races in the same weekend, not to mention the 3 very lovely medals.  Besides, it gave me a further excuse to eat more.


I was also able to meet up with a few Rock n Bloggers over the weekend.  Elizabeth and Andrew made me laugh a lot, I'm looking forward to seeing them again in Vancouver...and Vegas!  I'm really bad at this, I get all anxious and quiet so I'm glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone.

Race time!


It was a pleasant walk over to the start corrals, humidity was 85% and the temp was 16° which I found quite lovely.  Give me sunshine and heat over cold anytime.  We spotted lots of InknBurn but I managed to miss the one stripey top I was looking out for (sorry Leanne!)  We even saw an Octopus tank who upon spotting fellow cephalopod Kev, said hello.

I deposited Kev in corral 2 and headed off to 10.  We moved up past the palm trees then had a small delay at the start line so we could dance to Bruno Mars a train could get by.  Running through the town was really nice, quite a few people were out and I swear I saw more than 1 person randomly playing a guitar on their front porch.  Loud electric guitar + early Sunday = happy neighbours, right?

It must been around mile 4 that I noticed the SJ Fire Department were out, so this happened. 

 
Then I spotted this which I thought was most entertaining.  Guinness table?


We ran by the start line and the finishing 10k'ers, then the front runners of the Half appeared in a heat haze.  Wow.  Always an amazing sight.  How do they make their legs do that?  It was pretty hot right about now and I slowed up so as to not die instead of clinging on to save a couple of minutes. 

Let's take a moment here to mention the roads.  They were a bit humpy with a very steep camber, a few holes and those square reflector things sticking up in the middle.  To run in the shade at the edge ideally you required one leg longer than the other.  I witnessed a remarkable fall/tumble/recovery thanks to the square tabs.  Surrounding runners gasped as she went down and gasped again as she popped right back up and kept running.  Bravo!

Behold a station with caramel GU!  That was the point at which I really started enjoying the rest of the race, heat and all.  (I'm stocking up on some of those bad boys for my marathon).  The water stations were plentiful on course and I found I was drinking 2 cups at each.  Note: no soda all weekend before races.

I challenged myself to run the remaining hills and by hills I mean underpasses.  This was a pretty flat course.  I particularly enjoyed running back into town and around to the finish line, it was PACKED with cheering spectators and I did not feel like I was going to expire unlike yesterday.  I soaked it all in and was disappointed to stop running. 

Half marathon #25 in the books at 2:32 (approx marathon pace).  Many thank yous to the Fairmont SJ for extending our checkout time by 2 hours so I could have a shower before we left to catch our flight home from San Fran.




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