Well I finished it....hard to believe it already has come and gone but this morning I ran my first HM. I just want to thank everybody for the support that you give and let you know that I probably couldn't have done as well as I did without the great information and tools that this site provides. Thanks Eric for putting this site together. So this is my first race report so I will see what I can put together. I was at the loading spot for the bus to the start line at 5:10. There was a line that was amazingly long. They only had 6 buses at the time so I didn't make it on the first wave of buses. When I finally arrived at the start line it was about 6:15. The race starts at 6:30 so by the time I dropped off my sweat bag and made my way to the 8:30 pace area it was almost time to start. This was by far the biggest race I have participated in with 6619 people starting. The temperature was pretty nice around 60 degrees at the start with a slight breeze. I was pretty nervous since this was my first HM but my plan was to start out easy with 8:30's for the first 6 miles and the pick it up to around 8:00 MM if I felt I could handle it. My minimum goal was to break 2 hours but I really wanted to run a 1:50 and figured it was within my reach. We started out fairly slow and with all the people my first mile ended up being 8:40. So I picked up the pace and my next mile was a little under 8:30 so I held onto that. I was feeling pretty good so I picked it up a bit early at around mile 5. I was feeling good and passed on the first water station but took some on at most of the rest of them just to wet my mouth a bit. The spectators were amazing. They really get into the race and some of them had sprinklers set up for runners to go through and there was plenty of energy in the air. Around mile nine there is Lemon Drop hill....I didn't think much of it since most of my runs include hills about the same size but it really drained me. It took me about a half mile to get my breathing and heart rate back to where I wanted it. Once I was back on the flat I got back in my groove and as we got closer to the downtown Duluth more people were along the road cheering us on. I knew my friends and brother were going to be around mile 10 - 11 so I was looking for them. They didn't even see me until I was on top of them. It was energizing to see them and I knew I didn't have much left of the race and made sure I held my pace. As we came into downtown Duluth the energy was amazing. There were so many people and all of them where cheering us on. With a mile left I started pushing a bit more and it seemed to take forever before I got to the final stretch. This was the most amazing part of the race. You come down into Canal Park and the street is lined with people. They have music going and the announcers are calling out names as the come across the line. I kicked it in all the way down Canal Park Dr and was running about as hard as I could pull out. It was kind of confusing because they had two balloon bridges across the course which I thought was the finish. Well I was wrong and the finish was still another 50 yards past that so I had to try to hold that pace and finally made it across the line at 1:45:35. Well that extra 50 yards was a bit too much for that sprint and well lets just say if they had a comment card I would let them know they need to have some buckets across the finish line because what little bit I ate for breakfast ended up on the ground right across the finish line. Not a perfect ending to the race but I'll take it with the time that I ran. I finished 823rd overall, 607/2394 for mens and 279/1012 for my division. My overall pace was 8:12 MM for an official chip time of 1:45:35. Overall I am very pleased with the way I ran this race. The course is great..the weather was great...the volunteers were great....and the spectators are amazing. If you haven't run either the Grandmas Marathon or the Garry Bjorklund Half you should definitely try to get up here to run it. Once again I would like to thank everybody on here for the support...and look forward to reading the reports from others who ran the race.

Great job! KEEP YOUR HEAD UP HIGH UNTIL YOUR STOMACH SETTLES DOWN TO PREVENT LOSING YOUR BREAKFAST .

Very nice!

Way to go Liz...

thank you! It took me twice the time that you did to finish it, I didn't train for it (I was given a womans half ticket on Friday the 13th) and I've never ran more than 7 miles so all in all I was dang proud to even make it. Next year I am training big time because I'm going to beat the snot out of this years time.

My sons and I were up there as well. My oldest threw down a 4:30ish PR in the half and my youngest raced well (not necessarily for time) in the 5k. I just wish the races could have been run on Sunday -- much better weather!!!