I have had a pretty good yet slow July so far. The weather here in Wisconsin has been great for outdoor activities, just not of the running sort. I am up to 68.7 miles for the month so far with my goal being to reach 200 like last July. Will I be able to do it? Not sure at this point in time. But the fact that July has 5 weekends in it certainly helps with the ability for 5 long runs.
I did another long run this past weekend. I drove down to the lakefront in hopes of some relief of cooler air but no such luck. I started a little later than I wanted to (about 6:15AM) and it was already warm, but not as warm and humid as the run the previous weekend where Mike and I ran around Lake Geneva for just over 20 miles. This run was only going to be 18 mile at an easy pace again.
It didn't start too good as in the first half mile, one of those darn red-winged black birds attacked me by swooping in and grabbing my hair as I passed somewhere near it's nest. Scared the crap out of me since I didn't hear it coming. Then about 1.3 miles in, I realized I didn't put the glide on my inner thighs so I returned to the car to put that on, again passing the bird who was hovering and squawking at me. I returned to the trail (and the bird) and ran a nice easy out and back with good views of the lake along the way, just no cooler temps. 18.15 miles later, I was done and ready to go home to welcome 3 different 7 year old girls coming over for my daughter's 7 year old birthday slumber party.
My last post was about Summerfest here in Milwaukee. They had their inaugural RocknSole Half Marathon & 10K this weekend and things didn't go too well for some of the over 6000 runners. From the beginning, this race seemed to be put on by amateurs for a few reasons. First, the originally wanted the race to start at 10:00AM. WHAT? 10AM in Milwaukee in July for a half marathon? Are they nuts? Well, they did (smartly) change it to an 8:00AM start which is still too late if you ask me. Second, they chose the name Rock n' Sole Half Marathon. You might be thinking that this race is associated with the Rock n' Roll Marathon Series. Well, you would be wrong. To me, it just sounds like they stole the name. Yeah, I can see the difference, but too close if you ask me. (McDonald's & McDowell's comes to mind from the movie Coming to America). And then to even make it more similar, the logo's are a bit too similar in font and name. You be the judge:
To make things worse for the organizers, they had to deal with quite hot temperatures at race time and the half marathoners who started earlier than the 10K runners, used up most of the water leaving a lot of the 10K runner with no water. Many runners were taken to the hospital and many more needed medical assistance on the course. Poor contingency planning on the part of the race organizers. To the credit of the race director, he was on all the news stations taking responsibility for the errors and promising a better race next year. He has a lot of work to do so I wish him the best of luck for next year.
To be completely fair, I was not at the race so do not know what fully went on. But I was at the Chicago Marathon a few years back when it was even more hot and humid so I know what it is like to run in poor running conditions when race organizers screw up. I think this race is a good thing for Milwaukee and will improve a lot next year. Will I run it? Not sure, depends on my training schedule. There are a lot of pissed off runners out there this part weekend and some have a legitimate gripe while others are just taking it to an obscene extreme. Take this post for example of a lady who didn't even train for the race and then complains like it was the end of the world. She is one of those "blame others first and it's never my fault" types, at least that is the way it seems from this post.
Enough for now, many more miles to run in July.
Keep on Running!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment