The Middle Half Half Marathon Race Recap

Last Saturday was the 2012 Middle Half Murfreesboro Half Marathon.  This was the second year that I've run this race and if you've read last year's recap, my assessment of the race holds true again for this year's race.  It was a really great race on a fast, flat course with great support.  The first half of the race is particularly great as you get to see lots of scenic Murfreesboro.  The last half gets a little mind numbing as you're mostly out on the highway.  Like the Southern Plunge Marathon, I had backed off training to recover from said marathon that I had just run the week before.  The day of the race, I felt pretty good.  I wasn't feeling strong, but at least I wasn't still sore.  Unlike last week's race, I did not have the same pee pee issues as before.  I did have to make one pit stop at mile 3-ish, but that was the only one.  After that I was able to maintain a pretty decent pace around 7:40 ish until mile 9.  After that I got steadily slower as my legs started to hit their limit.  Around mile 11, I lost my ability to do math, but I didn't stop running.  Mentally it was important for me to keep pushing till I was done, which I did (Yay me!).  I ended up finishing with a time of 1:43:40, 7:55/mile and 27th out of 142 in my age group and 137th overall.  Not a PR, but I'm counting it as a Mental PR as I was able to gut out those last 4 boring miles.  

Notable about this race was the performance of my boy, Albert Cartner.  He rolled out a 1:39:35, 7:37/mile.  I know that he was hoping for better, but that was fast!  His buddy, Kyle Cook, managed a PR (without any tunes as his Ipod died on the starting line!) with a time of 2:00:49, 9:14/mile.  Congrats Kyle!  Congrats also to my fellow attorneys Bill Shick and Matt Bevins, who also ran that day.  I also saw a friend from high school, Amy Meyers, who was cheering on another friend of hers.  How random is that?  Somehow I managed to say hi to her and keep moving on.  She even managed to snag a picture of me at the end of the race waiting for my friends to cross.  Thanks Amy!

I look serious here, don't I?  I must

have been looking for Jim N Nick's cheese biscuits!

One final note...the Middle Half had great post-race grub!  Jim N Nick's barbeque was a sponsor and they had my favorite, cheese biscuits on hand.  I loaded up on them and headed home happy.