Durham 1/4 Marathon

I've enjoyed every race I've been in. Until now.

I've heard from other runners about how every so often they just have a bad run but I hadn't experienced that in an actual race. Now I have.

To start with, it was hot. The race didn't start till 9:00am so I think it was already about 24 degrees when we started. And humid.

I managed to get a cramp about half a kilometre into the race that started in my right side then gradually progressed to my left side and then all the way around my back. Fun. That lasted till about the 3K mark.

Then there was the water situation. Who would ever have thought that in a race with 300 people, the organizers would somehow manage to run out of water? At the 2.5K mark, there was water. At the 5K mark, there was a water station that had water after we waited for 30 seconds. Of course, it tasted like it came from someone's swimming pool so I ended up using the last of my own water to rinse the awful taste out of my mouth. Then at the 7.5K mark, they were actually out of water and just had warm Gatorade. Yuck!

I finished it, but only because there were no taxis passing along the route. I swear that if there had been, I would have been flagging one!

Not my best run ever, but I guess we all have bad ones once in a while. On to the next!