Today I completed my second half marathon.  This one was the "Running with the Cows" 1/2 marathon in Wea, Kansas (around 250th and Metcalf).  I felt a bit like a cow at the beginning, for they shoved us all into very small starting corrals, as pictured below.

This race had "pacers", which were people wearing orange shirts holding flags with their finishing time.  If you stayed with a pacer holding your ideal race time, then you would achieve your goal.  The Abilene 1/2 marathon didn't have this, so it was a nifty and novel idea for me!  I ran most of the race with the 1:55 group and really enjoyed chatting with them.  It was convenient being able to run a race at a goal pace without doing any of the work of pacing myself (which would include wearing a watch, looking at it, and paying attention to mile markers, none of which I am very good at).

Anyway, my finishing time was 1:53:46, which comes to 8 minutes and 37 seconds per mile.  You may note that this was 13 minutes faster than the half marathon I ran in April (and today's race was hillier, too!).  If I continue improving my half marathon pace by 13 minutes each month, I think that I will qualify for the Olympics shortly.

All finishers of this race received a cowbell, which I am proudly displaying in the post-race photo below.

Today, my mother and sister were discussing the impending time change, and we all agreed that we do hate losing an hour for the spring time change.  My mom announced that she had a better idea.  Instead of losing an hour on one Sunday, we should instead lose five minutes every Sunday for twelve weeks.  I think that people's clocks would all be way off by the end of the twelve weeks, so I'm not sure that's a very good plan -- but it would give you an excuse for being late for three months!

My sister, though, had a much better idea.  Instead of time changing at midnight on Sunday, the time change should be at 1:00 PM on Monday.  That way, we would be at work, and suddenly at 1:00 it would be 2:00, so we could all go home an hour earlier.  She's a genius!!!

To get 2012 off to a good start, I decided to participate in the New Year's Day 10-Mile Fun Run, hosted by KC's track club.  It was definitely the least organized race I've ever been in -- by far! 

There was no advanced registration, so on the day of the race, you just signed a waiver, and you could run the race.  At the 10:00 start time, there was a long line of people that still needed to sign a waiver.  Therefore, they came over the PA system and announced that if you hadn't signed a waiver yet, you didn't need to and to get to the starting line.  There were no starting groups by anticipated race time, so everyone started together in a giant blob.  I ended up at the front, meaning that for the first mile, everyone was passing me, which is a little disheartening.  Also humorously, they warned us over the PA system that there was ice on the first bridge, "...so be careful, especially if you didn't sign a waiver!"

The instructions - again given over the PA prior to the race's start - was that there would be a marker at miles 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.  At mile 5, you were to turn around and reverse the course, therefore totaling 10 miles.  In reality, though, this was not the case.  At some point past the mile 3 marker, the trail branched out, giving the options of straight or left.  There was no sign saying where to go, and although most people ahead of me were turning left, that didn't seem correct to me.  Confused, I paused.  Just then, another runner came back toward me from straight ahead.  He informed us that the trail was under construction and closed in that direction-- so I turned left.  However, that just made a loop and got us back on the main course to reverse the route back to the start.  Confused, I ran the loop a second time, trying to figure out where to go to get to the mile 4 sign.  As it turned out, there was no mile 4 sign, and returning to the start at that point was my only option. 

Apparently the instructions given at the start were incorrect.  The course could not be 10 miles, for the trail was under construction heading west, and the city of Leawood wouldn't let the race include their part of the trail (meaning we couldn't run east).  So I'm not really sure how far I ran.

There was no shirt for the New Year's Day Fun Run.  However, the track club had leftover shirts from an 8K they hosted in November, so they were giving those out.  I am currently sporting my "Cliff Hanger 8K" shirt -- which is appropriate, since I did run at least 8 kilometers, and any shirt claiming I completed the 10 mile New Year's Day run would be inaccurate.

Now I need to find an actual 10 mile race to sign up for, as this one doesn't really count...

Happy New Year!