This year’s half marathon featured a new course and a corresponding
rearrangement of the finish area. I don’t do the marathon but from what I
understand that stayed the same, with one big exception. The part of this race
that I didn’t like in the past was that you had to arrive super early to catch
a bus to the starting area. Since the half marathon, which is the bulk of the
runners, no longer starts 13 miles away, they no longer have buses. This leaves
the marathoners to take the light rail system to the start. Since their start
and our start was at the same time, I never met anyone doing the marathon,
which felt a little odd, but I’ve done halves without a full before. I can’t
share any opinions on the use of the light rail for that reason.
After several years of running this race, I still don’t seem
to have the timing of the parking lot down. From the time I stopped on the
backed up highway about a half mile short of the exit until the time I was
parked in a spot that I’m not even sure I was legally in, was about fifty
minutes. The starting line was about eight tenths of a mile from where I parked
so I didn’t have time to go through my usual routine. That wasn’t too big of a
deal, I rarely get to properly warm up and stretch at big races. All of the
Rock and Roll events fall into that category. I’ve found that if I just don’t
go out too fast I seem to do okay. I try to get a good time, but I don’t go for
broke at every race for a couple of reasons. First, big races tend to not yield
great times because of crowding and second because I run so many halves a year
I would really get worn out if I spent everything every time.
Back to this year’s race….the new course was definitely an
upgrade to previous years. Although I live in the Phoenix area I’m not really
familiar with the areas of town that the old course ran through and I’m fairly
sure I don’t want to be. I’m sure there are rougher, heck MUCH rougher parts of
town here, but we ran past hookers, drug addicts and what felt like every pawn
shop east of L.A. The old course featured graffiti and broken glass, so kudos
on recognizing we didn’t care for it that much. The new course runs through the
area surrounding Arizona State University, the older parts of Scottsdale and
finally ends very similarly to what it used to with several miles in the Papago
Park area of Phoenix. The first ten miles of the course are slightly uphill and
although you rarely feel like you’re going uphill, my thighs were aware of it.
The last 5k was all downhill and although I was tired from not getting enough
distance work in, the downhill helped keep me less than 8 minute miles. I’ve run
faster races overall but I extremely happy with how consistent my pace was for
this race. My fastest and slowest miles didn’t even differ by 40 seconds if I
recall correctly.
The shirts this year were nice and simple; they weren’t
coated with corporate sponsors or extra graphics like many races. The shirt
itself was of good quality too. The number and finisher medal of the quality
you can expect from a race in the Rock and Roll series. The medals are rarely
super unique, but they’re always nice. Since we spend so much money on these races
it would nice if the medals weren’t so predictable, but again, they’re nice and
at least you get one. I read in the pre-race directions that I would be able to
pick up my desert dual (or is it duel?) medal for having done both Las Vegas
and Phoenix but I was unable to find the booth. Large races require large
finish areas and navigating to your car is hard enough after running 13 or 26
miles, so I suspect I wasn’t the only one who didn’t find this booth. I hope
they still mail them.
I’ve lived in Phoenix for 5 1/2 years now and I’ve run this
race probably 4 of those years. In previous years I swore I would never do it
again, but still did. This year I won’t say that. Parking issue aside (I’ll
just go earlier) I had a good time. I better understand where to go and what
the course is like. Maybe next year I can talk my brothers into coming out and
visiting for this race.
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