Taking the lead

It ocurred to me that running with a partner is like dancing and one person has to lead or you'll end up stepping on each other's feet. I prefer to lead since most of my fellow runners seem to either run too fast, or too slow for my taste or at an uneven pace. I can run mile splits within a second of each other on flat courses. Of course if you're going to lead you better know where you're going so I try to map my trail runs out in advance so I don't get my friends lost.

Solvang Half Marathon

Solvang is my kind of town. Yes, I know you're thinking what's a guy gonna like about a little dinky town with a bunch of curio shops. Well how's about 5 bakeries within 5 minutes walk of the finish line. Now you're talking danish.The expo consisted of registration, t-shirt pickup and two vendor booths, one for a new kind of herbal water from Austria and another for wine tasting.
Meredith and I ate at Pea Soup Anderson's on Saturday night before the race. It was the first time we'd eaten at this classic restaurant and the food was good and the atmosphere brought back memories of small town life from Long Island.

I had the bright idea or so it seemed at the time to run the four miles from my hotel in Buellton into Solvang to pick up the pre-race bus to the start in order to let Meredith sleep in and keep the car so she could drive into town at nine and meet me at the finish. What I hadn't figured out was that it would be pitch black at five a.m. when I left the hotel. I ran the first mile on the sidewalk then I had to switch to the shoulder. I enjoyed the warm up and I was serenaded by roosters and peacocks along the way but it was a little scary to run on the shoulder in the pitch black.

I arrived in town in time to grab a huge coffee cake at one of the aforementioned bakeries and then hopped on one of the last busses to the start. For a race we had a very laid back crowd. Just about everyone I spotted was there for the scenery, nary a club jersey to be seen amidst the hordes of ambling pre-race runners.

The weather was 50 ish and cloudy perfect for running and I ran the race as a training run keeping my heart rate below 135 the whole way for a time of 2:05. The first 5 miles were flat to rolling until we hit the one significant climb called cork screw hill at mile 6 and the last 5 miles were all downhill including some quad burning decents.

All in all it was a well organized race and good time. Post race they had some wine tasting but I opted to head back to my hotel for a shower and I caught the end of the continental breakfast before the 11am checkout.