My sibling Katy Ramos and I meet post-race to swap stories. Her 1st half marathon, my second. Fun when it was done.


So, I did my best to reach my pre-race goals. I had hoped for Top Ten finish in my age group and to run less than 1:40. I ran my fastest half to date by far, but fell just short of the top ten. RATS! No Diet Coke reward at the end for that. Here are the final stats:

7:05 per mile
168 out of 7221 Overall
141 out of 2414 Males
11 out of 162 Males in the M50 Age Group

I saw fellow Veloers Ben and Jono there. Here's my report:

Started by spending the night at Katies. We got up around 5 AM and did some oat meal with blueberries. Good pre-race food. Parked near campus and pedaled to stadium on my old $20 beater Giant mountain bike. Forgot my lock, but bungeed it to the fence and it was still there when I got back. Dropped off my race bag then got to start line just in time for the opening gun. I happened to stumble in next to the 1:35 pace group which was great. Hooked up the Ipod and away we went. Stayed right in front of them, although I felt like I could have gone faster. Determined to stay with my wingmen rather than go too fast and explode later. But after 7 miles, I found a policeman Jason running a wee bit faster. Got behind him for several miles. I saw one geezer up ahead that looked to be in my age group, got behind him. I lost contact with him with about a 1/2 mile to go. Had I stayed on him and passed him, I may have finished in Top Ten for my age group. Still, when I came into the football stadium and saw time clock at 1:33 something, knew I had run pretty fast. Ended up officially at 1:32.47, but in 11th. Booo. Hiss. Flopped. Still pretty sore today, especially going down stairs. Kind of looking forward to running this one again next year. Maybe go out a little faster and get under 1:30?? Some old goat from western Nebraska in my age group ran 1:21. Amazing. Time for me to switch to Ironman mode with the 70.3 Boulder Ironman looming next.