I hope everyone had fun in the beautiful weekend weather!

The race was a sloppy, soggy mess -- but at least the rain let up after the first 2-3 miles!  I managed to kill my Garmin footpod after a total of maybe 2.5mi of rain-running and no submergings.  Weird.  Otherwise, I had a great time despite not being able to quite get the pace I was hoping for.  People around me for almost the entire distance made it feel more like competition and much less like a time-trial.  Especially the final two miles coming up the big hill and then hauling to the finish line.  I very much enjoyed that part.

Cliff, congrats. How bad was the course -- was the first 3/4 mile on the dirt portion of the greenway muddy or a muddy/sloppy/slippery mess? Were some of the boardwalk sections after you crossed Johnston Rd (where the mile markers restart) under water? I looked at your log -- how did it measure so short (when Garmin measures it short it must be another .05 or .1 of a mile short)? Was the start a zoo or how did you get hung up (given the bad weather the # of participants had to be at a minimum, plus I think the 4 mile had a separate start area which removed those folks fr your start)?

Rob, the course itself was actually pretty good for traction -- there were only 2-3 places (all on the planks) where I felt compromised footing, and never to the point that I feared I'd fall on my ass.  But there was that slight element of hesitation for at least the first half, because I just didn't know enough about it to trust the ground, relax, and let go.  The early part, just after we left the roads, was muddy but not slippery (so long as you chose your footing/navigated your path wisely).  Lots of mud-spattered shirtss, shorts, and calves.  It transported me back to high-school cross-country days!

Not sure what happened with the launch.  I was on the far side, so I had to ingratiate myself into the crowd to avoid the Start arch; then there were 12"-tall cones (to not see 'til the last second and then not trip over) and oncoming traffic (preventing cone avoidance by just moving to the right) as we went down Johnston.  And I didn't want to go out hot, so I tried to find a reasonable pace early ... and I think I under-shot it. 

As for the Garmin accuracy, I dunno:

• 1mi (Auto-Lap) splits kept coming later and later after the mile markers;
• my pace was always showing as 6:5x, despite feeling like I was running a little harder than that; and
• I finished with 9.89mi showing.

In retrospect, I think the Garmin was just off -- maybe the heavy cloud cover and/or tree canopy affected it.  The course is certified, I trust CRC to have the mile markers in the right places, and adjusting the Garmin-splits to 0.989mi puts my paces at much closer to what they felt like (I've been working on running/racing by feel, so I was surprised when my race-feel didn't correlate to the displayed Garmin pace).

All told, I wish I hadn't looked at the darned thing at all.  I ran hard and raced well.  My only negative for the event was thinking I was behind my target pace and wouldn't break 68, all based on the stupid GPS.

The weekend was awful, I agree, but this morning was BEE-YOO-TEE-FULL!