I'm out of town for the week - hanging in Charleston after the Bridge Run for a vacation - so I'll be a little sparse this week.

Totals for last week, which saw nanxin get the gold star:

nanxin	42.9 mi	6:13:05
CarolinaBlue	42.4 mi	5:34:46
ChakaKahn	37.1 mi	4:24:45
old-runner	34.3 mi	5:03:27
Happyfeet	32.2 mi	4:57:15
theyapper66	20.7 mi	3:09:46
cpaterun	20.2 mi	2:55:50
runslikeafraggle	9.6 mi	1:41:13
alholley	6 mi	57:30

Congrats on the Gold Star nanxin! I can see by your running log that you've been making tremendous progress over the past year.

Good luck in that RaceFest Half Marathon. I ran it last year and it's a good race but pretty tough because of several big hills.

I haven't run the Dowd Y half so I don't know how they compare.  I've run a lot of Charlotte races but I never know where I'm at, although it does seem like a lot of them cover the same ground.

Shashi ran the Racefest half last year and he's got a better memory for that kind of stuff than I do, so maybe he'll say.

Nanxin (how do you prefer to be called btw?),

if I was you, I would run the last half of the Racefest course for one of your easy runs to get an idea of what you'll be facing.  I live in South Park and you have a lot of steeper hills that are 300m to 600m in length (so in a given mile this is where all of the elevation lies and these always seem to sap strength vs. a gradual 1% or 2% grade).  The hill up Valentine Terrace to Arbor Way (when you cross Fairview) is steep.  There is another steep hill about 1/2 mile fr Arbor Way, and at around 12.5 miles you'll be greeted by a steep hill up Barclay Downs fr Ferncliff to Schofield (these are somewhat similar to the grade of the hill in the DowdY 1/2 after that Myers Pk HS hill where you had to climb up Colony and then Roswell).

Shashi and Rob, thank you very much for your insight on the course, I was studying the evelation profile of the coruse in the last couple of days, the hill from mi 7 to mi 8 definately drawed my attention, I have a colleage lived in that area and he jogs around there every day, he also suggested that I should at least see it before the race. Another 2 hills I noticed are those Rob mentioned, one before the turn to arbor way and one before the turn to ferncliff rd. they can be tough especially for people like me who lack of long period of training.

I will have 4 friends run with me, one is a seasoned runner who is BQer and I don't need to worry about, other 3 are running their first half marathon or even their first race and they registered teh race partitally becuase of me, like Richard to his grandson, I don't want this one is their first and last race. I think all the information I got here can get me and them prepared for the race. Thanks.

BTW, my name is Han Zhang, Nanxin is my network name for last 10 years, so both work for me.

My highest finish ever Saturday at the Marti Estes 5k in Mooresville... 5th out of 515 finishers. Okay, maybe a couple hundred of 'em were walking, but still it's nice to be up near the front every once in a while. 

http://me5k.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2011_Marti_Estes_5k_race_results_Mooresville_NC.pdf

Anybody considering the chance to become the fastest in Charlotte for the mile?

http://www.charlottemuseummile.com/

Looks fun, and it gives me a chance to bring my daughters for free. 

Congrats, Richard! I looked at the times of the rest of the field and there were lots of people in the low 20:00's so I'd still be quite proud. It looks like over half the field were actually running and not walking.