Glass City Half Marathon Race Review

4 miles on the schedule today....done!  Legs are feeling good and ready.

----------------

Short Version


Finishing time:  1:47:41
Overall place - 370 out of 2,142
Men overall place - 280 out of 941
Men(40-44) place - 47 out of 139

Great race, loved the course overall, would do the race again.

---------------

Long Version


I started out very early with this race on Sunday.  The alarm went off at 3:15am.  Actually, I did not sleep well so the alarm actually did not wake me since I was up before the alarm went off.  I did my usual pre-race routine including eating a banana and two granola bars.  I had to be at my running buddy's, T, home at 4:15am.  Yikes!

Got there and he was ready and waiting for me.  It's a fairly far distance - about an hour and 30 minutes to get down to Toledo.  Overall the drive was uneventful except the fact that we found out that the exit to where you went to the race was closed for construction.  We ended up taking the next exit and back tracking to the race start.  It would have been nice if the race director told us that the exit was closed especially for those out of towner's coming in the morning of the race.

We got in the exact parking spot that we wanted and got there about 6am.  The timing actually worked perfect.  We went to the registration to get our bibs.  There was an expo the day before so many of the people had already received their packet so it made things very easy.   Here's what the shirt looked like:

Cool race shirts

The start was right on the campus of University of Toledo.  I was really surprised with how nice the campus was.

University of Toledo

The registration was in their basketball arena called the John F. Savage arena just across the street from our car.

John F. Savage Arena

The half marathon did not start until 7am so we had time to go to the bathroom, take our stuff back to the car and get back to the arena where we were able to stay inside until just before the race started.  While there was port-o-potties, we were able to use a real bathroom inside the arena.

We moved to the starting line at 6:45am so there was not much time waiting around.  I know it seems like we started very early(and we did) but overall this worked out great.  The race started just next to their football stadium on one of the campus roads.

The race started a few minutes after 7am and we were off.  The first half mile or so was around campus and then we headed out to the subdivisions in the area.  Wow - Toledo is a really nice place to live.  The homes in the area were huge and really well maintained!  There were people from the homes out to cheer us on but not a huge support.  I will say that the volunteers and spectators that did come were helping in cheering us on to keep us moving along.

After around mile seven, we headed into the Wildwood Preserve Metropark.  Another awesome area to run in for a race.  The trails were paved and was a really nice path.  Unfortunately we were only in this about a mile and a half but what we did run of it was nice.  After the park is where we turned off from the marathoners and headed back to the finish line.  It was a paved bike trail that went along the rail road track.  I did hear the train once but was not sure where it was.  This part of the race was kind of boring since it was a straightaway but I got through it well.  This took us from about 8.5 miles to just over 12 miles.

After 12 miles, we headed back towards the campus.  With the last mile or so, we finished on the football field of the Glass Bowl Stadium.  It was a fantastic finish and they had a video of you finishing going on the big screen as you entered the finish line and called your name as well.  Here's what it looked like:

Glass Bowl

One of the best ways to finish a race in my opinion!  Total running time of 1:47:41.  The course overall was flat with a few minor elevation changes.  While it was not even close to one of my fastest races but, I had a great time and did not try to kill myself on the course for speed.  I did, however, have a nice negative split with my first mile being 8:43 and my last being 7:34.

Once we crossed the finish line, we got our medal and a bottle of water.  The medal was nice and you also got a glass finisher's mug which was nice and it's the first mug I have received at a race.  As an added bonus, you got as much free beer in it that you wanted - seriously!  Take a look:

Nice Medal

Cool Finisher Mug!

After you got out of the stadium, there were bagels, pizza, pizza bread, beer, apple slices from Subway and bananas to eat.  Plenty of food and drink to go around.  Since I can't stomach pizza and beer at 9am, I opted for a bagel, banana and water.

T and I got separated since we always run our own race.  He finished just about 6 minutes behind me but I missed him at the finish line and searched about 15 minutes looking for him but he eventually found me and we were off to drive back to Detroit.  Our hands were still really cold so we stopped at McDonalds to order some nice hot coffee.  It felt nice to get warm again.  Here's my traditional post race picture of me at home:

I would absolutely do this race again.  Here's my summary points:

• Overall nice course
• xAct results to Facebook/email is a nice feature
• Good organization(except the notice of road exit closure)
• Nice start
• Great Stadium finish
• Nice medal
• Great mug as an extra finisher gift
• Great finish line food
• I love the T-shirt design(even though it's a white shirt)
• Great volunteers and water stations

Have a great day and....Keep Running!!!!