The Syracuse Half Marathon was yesterday. This was my first race in over five months. I got a decent night of sleep the night before, and my stomach was pretty cooperative in the morning. I made it to the race with time to spare, and I snuck in a chilly warm-up. The race started right around 7:45am, and nearly 5,000 people took off toward the big climb on the course. I felt pretty good heading up James Street, and I knew it would be a decent day.
photo credit: Laura Kline
After a couple of miles, I had to pee! What a nuisance?! At first it was just annoying, but by mile five, it had to happen. I stopped as quickly as I could and pissed away 31 seconds โ literally. I was a little stiff when I started running again, and it definitely took some time to get back into the flow. I had been passed by one runner, and I was sitting in about 15th place.
I started to run out of steam around 10 miles, and my last three miles definitely were not my quickest. From mile five, when I stopped, to the end, I passed two people and I got passed by two people. I ended up finishing 15th place out of 4,652 finishers. My official time was 1:17:17. My running time was 1:16:46 โ curse you, bladder!! I snagged third in my age group, which earned me the bottle of Finger Lakes wine pictured at the bottom of this post. I was a little over my goal time, but overall, Iโm pretty happy with it.
The race was extremely well organized. There were great shirts this year. Excellent medals. Perfect course direction. A fantastic post-race party. I really have no complaints at all!
Full results of the race are available here.
Have you ever won alcohol at a race before?
