Ran the Florida Track Club Mary Andrews Half-Marathon This Morning

Named in honor of local distance runner Mary Andrews, who passed away a few years ago from cancer, the Florida Track Club has been holding an annual combination marathon/half-marathon event on the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail here in Alachua County some 15-20 miles southeast of Gainesville.  I've run their half-marathon the previous two years there, and covered the exact same course (doubled over) for the full marathon last November with a different organizing group.  I had considered signing up for the marathon this year, but decided with my ongoing medical issues to play it more conservatively and settle for a 13.1 mile run.  Only one problem, though: right after I signed up for the race, severe weather forecasts began to abound about race day morning: it was going to be a very wet, rainy affair unless thunderstorms canceled it outright.  The Florida Track Club organizers began to e-mail us updates concerning Sunday morning, when the race was scheduled, and about what they would do about the bad weather.  I woke up that morning intending to just skip it all and let it go for another year when I received their e-mail stating that they had moved everything to this morning instead.  I was happy about that, and headed down there to run my half-marathon, starting at 8 am with the rain and thunder long gone, replaced by painfully (for me) cold conditions: 35 degrees, 75% humidity.  I somehow managed to get everything in place for the race's start, and my strategy was simple: I wouldn't try to set any personal best, but rather just run through it all and try to follow just behind the slowest pacer they provided, which was stated in their guide at 2 hours 20 minutes.  At the start I was near the back of the pack and searched ahead for my pacer...never found him/her for the simple reason that they didn't have any pacers.  By the time I realized that, I found myself running a much faster pace than planned, stumbling my way at the end to a chip time of 2:05:13...some two-and-a-half minutes faster than last year's finishing time and my fastest half-marathon since February 2015.   You can view the results by clicking HERE. Because the race had been delayed a day, there were fewer participants and, as a result, I was eligible to get a very attractive lavender running jacket with the Mary Andrews logo, along with a similarly-decorated coffee mug and some electrolyte-infused coffee.  So this extended weekend saw me running two races, a 5K on Saturday and a half-marathon today.  I doubt I'll be doing that again, and with my upcoming surgery in March it doesn't look like another half-marathon is within the immediate future for me either.  I'm glad I ran today's race...I didn't experience any leg cramps like I did after last November's marathon.  Then again, I went heavy on electrolytes before the race...