Race Recap: OUC Half Marathon 2011

After my Friday spent downing Emergen-C, I was surprised to wake up Saturday feeling decent. Since I had felt so awful all week I hadn’t gotten around to going to the grocery story so my pre-race breakfast ended up being a bowl of rice cereal with vanilla soy milk and a scoop of peanut butter. Not my finest meal, but it did the job.

Since the OUC Half Marathon starts at Lake Eola, my friend Rox met me at 6:15 am for our warm-up walk to the start line. There we met with our friend T and one of her friends.

Here’s the view from our meeting spot:

And here we were:

When Rox and I trained for our first half marathon, T had trained with us until an injured hip forced her to stop, followed by her short-lived breakup with running. When I found out a few weeks ago that she was training for the OUC Half, I got really excited… we could finish what we started a couple of years ago! I signed up for the race last week and hoped to run it with her.

We headed to the start around 6:55 AM, five minutes before the start. I always love the energy at start lines.

If this picture looks familiar, it’s because it’s essentially the same start as the Seniors First Turkey Trot 5k.

And we were off. Below are some pics from the race.

Here we are around mile 3:

We had just run into Carolina from Peas in a Blog who was wearing the best t-shirt ever:

Shortly after we saw more of T’s friends wearing shirts with T’s mug on them:

I have now requested that Donnie make and wear a t-shirt with my face on it for the Walt Disney World Marathon. He said he will oblige.

I’m sad I didn’t get a photo of the two finer ladies sitting at a small table in the middle of a median around mile three drinking mimosas. Now that’s how ladies spectate!

Somewhere mid-race we saw the local Lululemon ladies:

Here’s T and I around mile 7. One of us had just pointed out that we were more than halfway finished:

The marathon was a mix between running in downtown neighborhoods and some shared highways. Here’s a long stretch of a shared road in front of Boone High School:

Here we are giving it a final push along mile 13. I love that T was a good sport with all of the pics I was taking. At this point she was digging deep to find energy she didn’t know she had. And there may have been cursing…

T finished her first half marathon! I’m so proud of her! Rox finished too… Way ahead of us… I’m proud of her too.

Here’s a shot of me with Rox and two of my running group ladies, Erica and Beth:

I knew I would be facing challenges in running someone else’s race . I wasn’t  able to run my usual pace, which was at times extremely difficult. And I had to play the role of encourager, which doesn’t always come naturally to me. But before the run I had decided that the rewards of being a part of T’s first half marathon would far exceed any personal best time I could get.

And even though it took us 3:01:06 to run the half, this half became a different kind of personal best for me.

PROS:

• Local half marathon
• Easy for your friends and family to come cheer you on
• Track Shack always puts on a good race
• Easy, flat course
• Nice, long-sleeved tech shirts

CONS:

• While it’s a spectator-friendly race, we didn’t really see many spectators outside of the beginning and the end
• There are stretches of shared road with vehicles

I’ll definitely run the OUC Half Marathon again next year.

Have you run the OUC Half Marathon? How was your experience?

Tags: orlando half marathons, orlando races, ouc half marathon, track shack races