Race Reports, Finally! Women's Only and 12 Mile Creek Half Marathons.

First up was Portage's Woman's Only Half Marathon, her first. It was held in bea-utiful Taylor Creek Park on May 26th. Portage, Aunt Eleanor,Cousin Jamie and friend Robin were all running. Uncle Bob (Bob's Your Uncle!) dropped them off at the start, the kids and I arrived later to see the girls finish........

The Girl mugs For the Camera

Cousin Jamie and a friend from Wawa finish in 1:55.PB for Jamie!

Here comes Portage.She wanted to beat 2:30, got 2:27 for her 1st half marathon!

Bringing it.

Robin is next

Here comes Aunt Eleanor, a PB for her as well and 5th in her age group. Must have been the Digger Burgers we had the night before.

Family Shot

Nice finisher's medal for the ladies.

They made me eat sushi to celebrate the great weekend. I posted this shot on the 100 beers Blog.

                                                         12 Mile Creek-June 2nd, 2012
Next up was the 12 Mile Creek Half Marathon in St. Catherines, my 1st race this year after knee pain in Feb-March-April and then rotator Cuff injuries in April-May. Sucks to be old! But seriously, I've got to start stretching and my physiotherapist has given me lots of exercises to do.
  Usually, The Captain and me run this race together, unfortunately he was home sick. So my buddy Matt Wilson (brother of the Wilson Twins, Brad and Eddie) picked me up at 6:39 a.m. for the drive to St. Kitts. This was unusual, because Matt is usually right on time and he had said 6:41 for pick-up, which left me scrambling when he arrived a full two minutes early, and I forgot my wallet in the resulting kerfuffle. Oh well, off we headed, arriving a full hour before race start.

Almost there

We parked about halfway up the Niagara Escarpment. It's  2 miles of uphill road running from the bottom to the top, you climb 300 feet (think 30 story apartment building) overall. And the climbing starts at Mile 11. DOH.

The sun came out just before the race started.

See that large group of people way down at the end of the road? That's where the race starts (we thought), about half a mile from where we parked.

Keep going......

Mass confusion at the start. I blame this guy!

So everyone walked to where the Bag Piper was, thinking that was the start, as is the tradition here. Then we found out the start was back where we came from, we had to run from the start and go around the Piper to get the full  13.1 mile distance in.

That's the actual start. Matt and me were the last two to make it back, which put us in the front of the fast people. DOH.

And we're off! Matt sets the pace, looks like he's in 4th place here, and I must have been in 5th. Not for long.

Some nice mud once we finally hit the single track. They had rains of Biblical proportions here the day before.

More road running than I remembered, but the trail parts were nice.

12 Mile Creek. The sun did come out and it got hot.

Pedestrian bridge over the highway.

Some gravel paths as well.

 Even though I have run this race 7 times, I managed to get lost. How pathetic is that? In my defence, the course was pretty poorly marked at some crucial turns, and I wasn't the only veteran who ran some bonus distance.

The beer and wine aid station at the turnaround. This is manned by a retired St. Catherines firefighter.They got a chuckle out of my camera.

He let me behind the bar!

Crossing the bridge over the highway

Lola

 So once Matt pulled away, I saw him at the beer aid station turnaround and figgered he was 4 minutes ahead. He is running well, I found out later that he has 49 marathons under his belt, and a PB here of 1:31. I passed at least 15 people in the 2nd half of the race, and maybe 3 people passed me. So, for the shape I'm in, I guess I paced myself properly.
Matt and me finished so quickly they didn't have the beer tent set up, so there was a bit of concern on my part. Not to worry.

Found it. Beer tent! Great Lakes Blonde on tap. Very Nice.

Pizza Tent! Unlike most post race pizza, this is great nosh.

Escarpment looms behind the beer tent.

 One of the cool things about 12 Mile Creek is you get your name on the race shirt. The more times you have run it, the higher up on the list you move.

The shirt

 As you can see, Matt has run this race a lot. Didn't see John Daly out there. And Octavian Constantinescu? Sounds like someone made that name up.

A Turkey Vulture kept circling us. Not Good.

  So Matt hammered it in 1:49, I thought he would be in for a podium spot because he is only a week younger than me. This race is old school, no timing chips here. They have one guy at finish taking bib #'s off as you cross, another writing down the times. Then they go to a trailer and match them up and figure out the awards. Turns out Matt was 5th in the 50-54 category and I was 8th with a 1:55:56 . I slammed back 6 Great Lakes Blondes while we waited for the results, so it wasn't a complete loss.
Complete Results are HERE.
  Anyhow, it's off to Paris Ontario for the Phlox 25K next weekend. It will be Portage's 1st 25K, and she will be joined by "The Boy" (10K) Captain (if he's feeling better), Cyrus, Swiss, me and possibly Phantom. We tried to talk Dora into joining us, but she apparently has some 70.5 mile race (happy?)  in Pennsylvania the day before and wimped out. Good Luck Dora, and we seriously have to get our schedules coordinated.
And finally, 4 years ago this weekend, the Pylons invaded UConn.