Sunday, October 16, 2016

Detroit Free Press Half: October 16th, 2016

Jess signed us up for the free press half marathon this year!  We have done this race a few times in the past.  I usually prefer trail races over road races but the Detroit race is pretty awesome.  It is an international marathon so the course goes over the Ambassador bridge into Canada and comes back to the U.S. through the tunnel, yes, there is a tunnel under the Detroit River and it's kind of a scary place, more on that later.  The typical weather for this event is really cold in the morning and kind of cold by the time it's over.  This year it was a little different.  We did not stand around the starting corral shivering like crazy hoping to get started so we could get warmed up.  Instead, it was very muggy and not that cold.  I was able to start the race with a T-shirt on and was sweating by the time it was over.  

We were a little late getting to the starting area so we just jumped through the fence into one of the starting corrals.  I am not sure which corral we were even in but it did not really matter.  We were finally off and running.  I told Jess I could not really run full bore because I had not really trained for the event.  In fact, I had not done any long runs at all since the Mohican 100 back in June.  I figured I would injure myself if I went out to fast.  Jess had other plans, she was feeling great at the beginning of the race and we were keeping a pretty quick pace up and over the bridge.  The views of the Detroit river and the city skyline with the sun coming up in the background were very uplifting.  I was trying my best to keep up with her but I admit that I was struggling.  We were in Canada and I had to use the bathroom so I told Jess to keep going without me and I would meet her at the finish.  She agreed and took off while I jumped in the porta potty.  I was glad to be able to ease off the pace and relax a little.  I was shocked to see temperatures climb into the 60s during the mid October day, and although the temperature was nice, the humidity was very high.  It felt pretty nasty out really.  Then upon entering the tunnel the humidity was even worse since tens of thousands of other runners were either in the tunnel with me or had already gone through.  There was one runner who was down for the count and emergency vehicles were trying to make their way back to the runner.

I was glad to emerge out of the tunnel and get some air!  Then we were running through the streets of Corktown, an old Irish neighborhood in Detroit, and I seen a runner up ahead who looked a lot like Jess.  Actually this runner was wearing the same exact clothes that Jess had on!  Wait, it was Jess!  She hit a bit of a wall and had slowed down which allowed me to catch her.  I was glad to "run" into her because that meant we did not have to try and find each other after the race. I didn't have my phone with me and it would of been difficult.  Also, we were able to enjoy the last two miles of the course with each other.  We came through the finish line and were glad to be done.  We were able to use the showers at the Renaissance Center gym and then met up with some out of town friends for brunch and a few drinks inside the Ren Cen!  It was a fun half marathon and we are proud to call it our local road race.

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