Monday, October 27, 2008

The Augusta Chronicle Half Marathon




I had the opportunity to participate this weekend in the inaugural Augusta Chronicle Half Marathon. The organizers did a pretty good job of getting everything ready to go in anticipation of the race. The only thing they forgot was that there would be a train on the tracks crossing the race course at the starting time. After a short delay while waiting in the morning dark for the train to pass, the air horn was sounded signaling the start of the race. The runners crowded through the starting arch on Broad Street, made the turn around the block at 8th Street to get onto Reynolds and continued on their way. I knew at this point I was running way too fast, but the adrenaline kept pushing me to keep up with the crowd instead of running my own race. We turned down 13th Street where the Richmond County Police were controlling traffic now that the course was narrowed down to one traffic lane instead of the whole road. Over the length of the course the police and Army volunteers did a wonderful job of directing the traffic away from the runners. We hit our first water station on 13th Street just before turning onto Laney Walker Blvd. As with every other station on the course, the volunteers did a great job of getting water and energy gel out to the runners. The course continued down Laney Walker and then briefly down Druid Park Ave before turning onto Central Ave. This would be the big test of the race. The course took Central all the way up the hill to Highland and then uphill even more to Walton Way. The hill was killer. In all fairness, I hadn't done nearly as much training as I should have before the race, but I wasn't really expecting the hill to take as much out of me as it did. But the hill is not what did me in. Everyone knows that what goes up must come down. After running a half mile down Walton we turned to run down the hill at Milledge Rd. Here we had a mile stretch of road straight down hill. This section killed my knees. On paper a mile straight downhill sounds like a nice break after two miles uphill, but it really wasn't much of a rest at all. I had to consciously remind myself to take it easy and not let gravity grab hold of me. My joints were taking a hit as it was. I didn't need further pain. Once we got to the bottom of the hill there came a lap around Lake Olmstead. This was probably the nicest section of the run, with the fog burning off of the serene lake. I finally got into a groove and set a nice pace for myself going around the lake. It is too bad that the city is considering building a new stadium downtown instead of pumping a little more money into the park and surrounding area by this lake. It is under-appreciated in this town, but that is a topic for a different post. Once the circuit around the lake was complete, we got to run up on the Calhoun Expressway. This was a nice addition to the race as well, and threw in an extra bit of vertical climb too. The downside to this, which I think was not considered by race organizers (and it came into effect a bit toward the bottom of Central Ave too) was the grade of the road around the long curves. This was another unnecessary hit on the knees, as our legs were running at two different levels. But I kept pushing and once I cleared the expressway I saw the sign informing me that I was a mile from the finish line. At this point I began to let adrenaline take over again and ran probably my fastest mile. I ran hard down Greene Street and then when we turned around at 6th Street to go back down Broad I pushed it up one more gear and more or less sprinted the three final blocks down to the finishing chute and across the finish line. It was not my best time for 13.1 miles, but it was not a bad time either. I finished somewhere near the middle of the pack and was not disappointed at all. I still do not know my official finishing time. I am unable to find results posted anywhere on the internet, nor can I find photos from the race, outside of the three pictures the Augusta Chronicle posted with their story on the race . This is fairly disappointing. All in all, the race was a success for Augusta and I look forward to next year's run. I do hope they reconsider the course a bit to lessen the impact on the knees going down that hill and around some of those curves, but the start/finish line area was well organized and the volunteers on the course were great. I do feel that more advertising could be put into the race. Considering that there were around a thousand people entered into the half marathon, I was surprised at how few people were actually out cheering on the course. Those that were out though were enthusiastic and it was appreciated, I'm sure, by all of the runners. Not too bad though, considering it was Augusta's first.

5 comments:

  1. Good summary of the race. I too am trying to locate official results but have been unsuccessful so far. I even e-mailed the race organizer and website administrator but they haven't bothered to reply. Quite disappointing. The Calhoun Expressway section of the course was horrible. Not only the camber you mentioned, but the fact that it was concrete really pounded my body esp during that latter part of the race. I won't run it again if that's still part of future courses. Also, I knew they wouldn't have bands every 3 miles as they (overly optimistically) claimed in their pre-race marketing hype.

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  2. The results will be posted on the website on Wednesday. They were printed in the Augusta Chronicle on Monday. The route was created by Adam Ward, the president of the Augusta Striders, as well as coach of ASU's cross country team. I would trust him to create an appropriate course for runners. As for the bands, sorry you were so let down. This was a first year event. The course was challenging, very safe, and things ran smoothly. Also, proper protocol was followed to account for the train, but CSX apparently tried to "push through" a train, hence the 2 1/2 minute delay. If the course isn't to your liking, then why should you want to race it? But don't let that be a sweeping indictment of the event. We created the Augusta Half Marathon to be something special. In our first year we had 780 registrants, 200 + volunteers, and generally a great response. If we couldn't do everything we wanted to in the first year that doesn't mean that it was a bad event. It just means we have more things to plan for in the future. Finally, we just received the photos from our photographer today. We hope to post them on the website this week. The Sports Council has a staff of four. We have not even had a moment to slow down since the event. If things don't happen as quickly as people like it may just be because we are working with limited resources. We are greatly appreciative of everyone that participated. - Randy@augustasportscouncil.org

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  3. I ran in the Governors cup in Columbia on Saturday, the same days as the Augusta event. The results were up that afternoon. Heck, if I have to wait until Wednesday the excitement is gone. Hire a 5th person!

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  4. Well I found them here today, they may have been there for a while:

    http://www.onlineraceresults.com/event/view_event.php?event_id=3100

    copy and paste the entire link or go to www.onlineraceresults.com and find the event.

    Hope that helps. It was a wonderful day of running. They did well for a first time event and with 670+ runners.

    Good Running!

    georgiarunner@yahoo.com

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  5. Randy, thanks for stopping by the site and all the work you did in advance of this race. Much appreciated! georgiarunner, thanks for the link!

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