Mancester Road Race

What a great way to start my Turkey Day.  I got up yesterday at 6:30am to get ready to drive the 45 minutes to Manchester CT to run in the 75 annual Manchester Road Race.  This is the first year that I have ever run this race.  My father and brother live in Manchester so I drove to their house.  It was better than taking the shuttle which I heard was super packed and no fun. 

I got to my father's house about 9am.  The race started at 10am and they wanted all runners to be lined up by 9:30.  He was able to drive me about a mile from the starting line.  A lot of roads in down town Manchester were closed by then.  I huffed it the mile to starting line.  They have runners line up by the time which they think it will take them to finish.  I was figuring about 50 minutes or so.  I tried to get my bum back to where I should be but there were 20,000 people in my way.  I felt like cattle.  Everyone was trying to get to the same place but there was no room to move.  At 9:50 am I figured I was never going to make it to the over 40 minutes sign.  When the gun went off people lifted the barrier between where us "late" runners were and where we were supposed to race.  I squeezed in to masses. 

There was really no running for about a 1/2 a mile.  We were squished so tight with our fellow runners it was even hard to walk.  It started to thin out a little at the 1/2 mile mark and I was at least able to jog.  At the hill around mile 2 the herd started to thin a little.  So many people were dressed up for the race.  Or half naked and painted.  Which when you are squished together for a half an hour is kinda fun.  My sweat shirt probably has blue and white body paint on it from the seven foot man who was topless and painted who was squeezed up against me at the start line. 

After the initial hill at mile 2ish it was mostly down hill from there.  I listened to a book on tape as I ran.  It make the run seem pretty quick.  I enjoyed seeing all of the costumes that people had donned for the occasion.  I saw a couple of supermen, some teletubies, Thor and a teenage mutant ninja turtle.  I did not get any photos.  It was too squished to get the phone out to get some. 

I made pretty good time.  52:12.  It is only 2 minutes off my goal and not being able to run for the first half a mile I think it is pretty good. 

Here is a photo I stole from the Hartford Courant

Here are my split times from my Garmin for yesterday's run.

Split	Hours:Minutes:Seconds Time	Miles Distance	Minutes per Mile Avg Pace
Summary	52:12.4	4.79	10:53.9
1	11:00.8	1.00	11:00.8
2	12:20.9	1.00	12:20.9
3	10:39.3	1.00
4	10:21.0	1.00	10:21.0
5	7:50.2	0.79	9:55.1