Sunday, May 21, 2006

Interesting Weekend in Cleveland

This weekend Cleveland was bustling! The Cavs played game 6 in the playoffs against Detroit, the Indians were at home, and we were there for the Marathon.

The start of the marathon today was rough. It was rainy, chilly and windy. We were thrilled we were doing just the half. Because it was so wet, there were very few bands and not much crowd support. There were plenty of water stops, though when we got to some of them they seemed surprised to see us.

I was a little surprised that we encountered traffic very early on - I think it was just 2 or so hours into the event. It wasn't until we got close to Jacobs Field that we realized there was another home baseball game during the marathon. The police did the best they could, but they were having a rough time keeping the cars back.

Within a mile or so of the finish, we turned a corner into a stiff headwind that was horrible! Luckily it had stopped raining earlier and had been sunny, so we had dried out.

As we approached the finish, we caught up with the full marathon finishers, which is nice. I was surprised how many people were there to cheer everyone on! Unfortunately, they had run out of half marathon medals. Apparently, a lot of people switched events over the weekend. That was disappointing, though we were given a flyer to tell us it will be mailed within 4 weeks.

Parts of the course were very pretty, though with rain and wind, being next to Lake Erie was tough. After the sun came out, the lake was really beautiful.

My finish time was close to 3:25 (forgot to stop my watch), about the same as Cinci two weeks ago. I didn't recover enough, though I saw plenty of other people from Cinci doing great. I walked with Chris from Georgia which was fun. I didn't even complain about the rain too much. My husband and his coworkers did great until the last couple miles when they were struggling. They finished just about 10 mins after me and Chris.

So, I'm not sure how to rate this event. I wouldn't mind getting comments from those of you who did this event.

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