Mill Creek 1/2 Recap

I must start this post by saying that Michele and I have coined this 1/2 marathon as "the worst course ever"!! Here is a brief description of the course from the website: This is the race to come and challenge yourself. You have 13.1 miles to complete 19 hills.

We arrived in Youngstown yesterday afternoon. We headed to second sole and grabbed our packets then tried to find the start of the race. Well, it turns out we were in Boardman and not Youngstown so we were on the wrong side of the park. One of our high school classmates actually lives in the area so we got in touch with her and she showed us how to get there. After we found the race site, the three of us headed to Olive Garden for dinner. After we loaded up on the carbs, Michele and I headed back to my brother's apartment and talked for hours about anything and everything. Michele showed me a website where I could look up my old race results (like from when I was in high school and college). It was really cool to see. I guess I have slowed with age because my times were quite impressive back then and I often placed top three in my age group. After we talked for what seemed like hours, we headed to bed.

We got up at 6:30 this morning and had our coffee, ate some breakfast, and got ready for the race and headed out around 7:45 to pick up our timing chips. They were actually ankle band chips which I had never experienced before today (they were sponsored by road ID). We posed for a quick picture and hit the bathrooms twice. At 8:45 we were off. The first two miles weren't too bad as they were downhill. We both felt good and were doing well. Around mile four the hills really got to me and Michele pulled away from me. I just couldn't keep the pace. The word hill doesn't do this course justice. You would think you were to the top of the hill just to find out you had to make a small turn and go up the rest of the hill. I was able to keep Michele in sight until around mile 11 and then I didn't see her again until the finish line. Michele finished in 1:56:49.20 and placed 12th in her age group. I came across in 1:58:35.30 and placed 7th in my age group. Michele's dad was at the finish which was great. We talked to him for awhile and had him take some pictures. Michele and I both had some problems with our IT bands today. The ironic part is that we had problems at the same spot on the course. We also were in agreement that we felt like we were walking up one of the hills even though we were running. We were both happy with our times on "the worst course ever". It is certainly not an easy course to run a PR on. All in all, we had a great time. We are going to run the Pittsburgh 1/2 in May to get ready for Cleveland. I will be adding some hill work outs and I few more races so that maybe, just maybe I can actually maintain a decent pace and run the entire race with Michele!! I am seriously contemplating running the St. Malachi 5 Miler this Saturday. Anyone have any opinions, suggestions based on the fact that I will be six days out from today's race?



Michele and I before the race in the heated recreation center

Me with my medal

Michele with her medal

Michele and I after the race

My hips and IT band are very sore. I stopped at Dick's tonight and bought a foam roller in the hopes of being able to stretch things out. After that I headed to the store to buy some epson salts to soak in tonight but I saw this and decided to give it a whirl. With that said I am off to soak .

Keep running, you're simply the best, and you inspire me!!