GARDNERS Pennsylvania, April 6 2014<\/p>\n
In 2013 I ran a half marathon<\/a> six days before the Bull Run Run 50 miler. The Run for the Animals<\/a> turned out to be one of my favorite races ever – the course was great, the volunteers were friendly, the cause was righteous, the post-race food and music were outstanding, I set a half marathon PR and got an age group award. There was no feature of that race that was less than top-notch.<\/p>\n Since I believe in doing what works, and I attributed my much-better-than-expected performance at BRR 2013 to my experience at the RftA, I decided to run a half marathon six days before the 2014 BRR as well.<\/p>\n I strongly considered going back to Onancock to run the RftA again, but it’s a little too far for a day trip and staying overnight for a mere half seems a little excessive.<\/p>\n So I chose this charming little trail half instead. It was still a couple hours drive, but that is easily day-trippable.<\/p>\n I enjoyed the race. The course abutted the Appalachian Trail; I’m not sure whether any of it actually joined up with the AT or not. There was more delta-z than I expected, some 1600 feet of gain according to my GPS record<\/a>. The organization was impeccable. I am a little late in writing up this report, so I may be mixing up the post-race spread with some other event’s, but in my memory there was this outstanding vegan curry that really hit the spot.<\/p>\n I don’t have much to say about the actual running. The aforementioned delta-z caused me to walk a fair bit of the course. A shamefully large bit, it must be said. The trail was beautiful, though, and the weather was great. I did my share of passing, I did my share of getting passed. Near the end of the course, in the last mile, I sloshed through a small stream and started climbing a good-sized hill. About three quarters of the way up I heard something behind me and looked back to see a woman determinedly hiking the rise. I got the feeling she had it in mind to pick me off before the finish, and I picked up the pace to stay ahead of her.<\/p>\n This turned out to be a challenge.<\/p>\n I wasn’t sure how far we had left to go, so I was hesitant to go all out, but I kept hearing footsteps closing the gap behind me. Finally I came off the trail onto the road leading back to the finish, and I felt comfortable starting a strong kick. I held a good pace through the finish and held off my rival by four seconds<\/a>.<\/p>\n This race was great, but all-in-all I think I’d rather do the the RftA again. Maybe I’ll make that trip again next year.<\/p>\n Miles this race: 13.1 GARDNERS Pennsylvania, April 6 2014 In 2013 I ran a half marathon six days before the Bull Run Run 50 miler. The Run for the Animals turned out to be one of my favorite races ever – the course was great, the volunteers were friendly, the cause was righteous, the post-race food and music were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":904,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiatjustitia.net\/wheezinggeezers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMiles raced this year: 105.8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"