Earlier this year, Matthew Inman (aka
The Oatmeal) announced that he would be organizing a 10k, half, and full marathon he called Beat the Blerch. For those of you unfamiliar with the Blerch, check out
this comic and the others in the series. According to Matt, the Blerch is the little voice in your head that tells you to quit, to take the day off. The Blerch is laziness embodied. So when he announced that he would be putting on this race, I was really excited. Problem was, it was in Washington, so the chances of me getting out there to run the race were on the slim-to-none end of the scale. The race turned out to be so popular that registration filled up very quickly. To address this, Matt made virtual race kits available. With the virtual race kit, you pay the entry fee, and they ship you all the things that you would have for the race: bib, shirt, medal, and other swag. Then you have to go run the race by yourself, or not, your call. I jumped at the chance to participate and ordered my kit.
I'll be honest, I didn't do that much training, and the training I did so was pretty slow and short. That wasn't a huge problem though, because I was my own race director, and I decided that there wasn't going to be a cutoff time for this half marathon.
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| Me and the Blerch before the race. |
My idea for the course was pretty vague, even as I walked out the door yesterday morning. I figured that I would start on some of the trails near campus and work my way toward West 7th street. The first three miles were all uphill, but the trail wandered in and out of a bunch of aspen groves, which made it more bearable.
I saw a couple cars on my way down California Gulch, but I had the course to myself other than that. It was good to have some time to myself after being on call for a week straight.
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| This hat has some serious miles on it. |
I ended up being a little over the half marathon at 13.3 miles, but it was a beautiful day and I was having a great time. I finished in 2:53 with an average pace around 13:00/mile. Not a PR or even a remotely fast run, but I was happy just to get out and enjoy the day. I'll add the map and elevation profile below for anyone interested.
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| The Blerch decided to stay home. |
