hot half marathon

yesterday a half marathon was held here. due to some silly rules regarding safety and consuming water during ramadan, we had to run 7+ laps of a 1.8 mile loop. 50 or so people showed up to do the run. started at 6am...although the weather has improved lately, and we've actually had some cool mornings, yesterday was a bit humid. the run started fine...one guy took off at the beginning, and he wasn't to be seen again until he started lapping everyone. i hung with a group of about 10 people up at the front for awhile...only a couple of these guys looked like real runners, others looked like they were in over their heads. after a mile or two of that, i decided to slow down, knowing i'd need some energy when the sun came out. the goal then became to catch as many of this group as possible before ending the race. i ran alone until about mile 6, then i started passing guys that fell out of the lead group...at that point, the sun had came out and the temperature was rising quickly. caught a couple more of them during the next few miles. at mile 10, there were about 5 guys in front of me...then the superfast guy laps me. as you're running in circles, you can pretty much tell where everyone's at in the race...the loop converges in a sort of figure 8, and several points in the race there are no obstacles, so you can see pretty far away. at mile 11, i see one more guy from the lead group...he was about 1/2 mile away. this was my last reachable target. i caught him with 1/4 mile to go in the race. i picked up the pace thinking he didn't have enough energy to sprint. i was wrong...with about 100 yards to go, i hear him charging forward...my legs were stuck in a much lower gear...not enough time to rev up to a full sprint. he catches me in the end...so i finish in around 6th place...maybe 5th...i didn't count all the guys at the finish line. we had race numbers, and they called out times, but no one sent out results. time was 1:48:56...i was happy with that...most of my running over the past 5 months has been on the treadmill. i'm far from comfortable in the heat.

i don't have a related graph for jon, since i don't have a way to download from the garmin to my mac. so i'm including this graph as a substitute.