Race Recap – Lincoln Presidential Half Marathon

I am terrible about remembering race courses.  And I now have two races to recap.  So this should be interesting.  Also, I’m pretty proud of that race medal picture.  Still bummed that it wasn’t a penny medal, but cool nonetheless.

I’m still not sure how I got talked into running a double, but Lincoln has been on the list for a while.  A fairly sizeable group of us (10 traveling to both races) made plans to travel together, which is always fun.  Thankfully, we had Jenny keeping us organized.

Friday, we flew into St. Louis and hit up the expo for Sunday’s race, then headed up to Springfield for the second expo and a bit of sight seeing.  Unfortunately, because we did have to head back to STL for the second race, we didn’t get to see the Lincoln museum, but we did get to see Lincoln’s house, which was really impressive.  And it’s a reason to go back.

While you couldn’t touch anything in the house, of course, you could touch the railing.  As the guide put it, this is the time when you can touch something that Lincoln touched.  I joked that I hoped I didn’t catch what he died from.  I don’t think anyone got the joke.

Dinner that night was tough.  Springfield isn’t a big place, and we ended up at a local pizza place for carry out.  What we didn’t know was that it was going to take an hour to get our food thanks to a party being held at the restaurant.  Lesson learned – next time, we will order pizza ahead or just stop and get sandwiches somewhere for dinner.

Race morning wasn’t too early, thankfully.  One of the advantages to a small town race is the ability to walk to the start line.  Not having to deal with early morning transportation was awesome.  We loaded up the cars and headed out.

Luckily, in our group, we had people who naturally grouped up by pace, so no one had to run alone.  Katie and I ran together and it was fun to see that we’re both at a similar place even at non-Disney races where we end up walking huge chunks due to crowds.  Of course, she’s been getting faster, so I need to get working.

Sadly, before the race, the anthem singer forgot some of the words.  Every anthem singer’s worst nightmare.  You can practice and practice and sometimes, the words just elude you.  Poor lady.

As I mentioned, I struggle to remember courses, which is why I can run the same race over and over, but I really enjoyed this course.  We ran through some of the historic areas, through a park, and even through the cemetery where Lincoln is buried.  There were definitely a number of photo opportunities on the course.  The volunteers were awesome.

The finish was slightly anti-climactic.  No big banner over the course or anything.  But it was a finish line, so I’m not going to complain.  The race allowed late registrants, and for slow runners like me, that leaves me worried that they will run out of medals.  It’s happened before.  But this race was awesome.  Late registrants got different bibs and the volunteers had last year’s medals to give them.  They would be mailed this year’s medals later.  Awesome!  Then those of us who registered early weren’t penalized, but late runners still got a medal at the finish.  It seems small, but it’s an awesome step to take.

Post-race, I grabbed some water and Gatorade and a delicious, delicious donut, and we headed out to my parents’ house for a home cooked breakfast and some puppy cuddles.  At this point, I wasn’t too sore, so I was hoping for the best for the following day’s race.