GOVX San Diego Half Marathon

Been doing the usual maintanance running .....but time for a half marathon! Especially since it's down in San Diego which is a nice change of venue. The GOVX name is kinda weird. If you are familiar with the military's 'store' called the "PX", this is sort of the same thing....anyway they put on this half marathon for anybody that wants to join and can afford the entry.

It's a good course, mostly dead flat but with a climb up something called "Banker's hill" followed by a bomb down to the finish. I liked it. I really pushed the heart rate on the last 2 miles....130's to 140's. The weather was perfect: foggy and cold, just the way we like it. The sun came out full force later and it got quite warm. BTW: This is the reason why I'm switching to halfs: the last three fulls have been nasty hot after the first 13 miles or so. Results: 2:11:49, 9:57 pace, age graded time 1:38:00

Running the Des Moines Marathon (#38)

It's been a while since Fresno, Toni bugging me for a marathon trip and so I picked this marathon to see something different.. a more midwestern town ....and hopefully with cooler weather than what we've been having here. You can't get to Des Moines from SJC airport without a stop ..this is kind of a drag but we made our connections ok.

We stayed in the "Savery" Hotel in downtown ..right next to the Expo (which was outdoors in tents in the park next to our hotel). (The woman that started this hotel used it to train the first set of WACs (women solders) for WW2.)

The temps were supposed to get to the 80's, sigh, and indeed they did. The course was not the greatest...it involved a bunch of loops...granted around a big lake and with trees here and there, but still..I would rather have seen the city via the run. IIRC correctly there were 1700 people at the race and only 700 full marathoners. Pretty small.

Me in the hotel room, at the expo and shot of the capitol building at night...