Summerfest Half Marathon

  On Sunday, I ran in the inaugural Summerfest half marathon with my good friends, Andy and Bud.  This was one of the craziest race experiences I've ever been in.  It was 77 degrees when Gretchen dropped me off at the start at 7:15am.  We were all sweating even before the race started - to novice runners, that is not a good sign.  To make things much, much worse, they ran out of water for the first 6 miles of the race!   Here's a story from the Journal Sentinel about that.

  This is the view shortly after the start: Up the hill to cross the Hoan Bridge.

 

  Running on the Hoan was like running on the surface of the sun (I've done it a few times).  Hot pavement + 85 degree temperature + no water = why people were dropping like flies.  I'd never seen so many ambulances during a race.

  Here are the 3 of us coming up to our supportive families at mile 6.  Normally, we would just wave and keep going, but we HAD to stop to get some water.

We made it!  They put out the Black flag when we were at mile 11 and were forcing people to walk because of the heat.  We walk/ran the remainder of the race and were relieved to finish in 2:36.  Congrats to Bud and Andy - that was not easy.

  Some supportive kids at the finish.  It wasn't easy on them being out in the heat all morning either!

This guy was a hot mess too.

  Proud to wear their daddy's medals.   Originally, we'd planned to hang out at Summerfest for lunch but it was too hot.  All I could think about for the second half of the race was getting home to my cold, dark basement and taking a nap.  We hung around to drink some water but we left shortly after we finished.

  That was a tough one!  I'm not deterred from trying this race again sometime.  I know they'll learn from their mistakes and make this the great event it could be.

Give this group some icecream!