While a student at Ohio University in Athens, I vaguely remembered a marathon being held in the spring. Some of my fellow PR/Journalism student friends volunteered to help promote the event and to work on race day.

At that point in my life, I could not understand why anyone would run 26.2 miles let alone volunteer to work at an event held that early on a weekend morning! Now that I have actually completed more than one marathon and more than 35 halves, I get it.

So on April 12 Deb, Steve and I entered the Athens Half Marathon.

Packet pickup featured a new assignment procedure called “dynamic” registration. Your number was assigned when you arrived to pick up your packet. It was cool and quicker than digging through a pile of preassigned bibs, but I’m not sure how it would work for a larger race. We received a long-sleeved bright green technical shirt. Though men’s sizes, I might be able to wear it. It’s not horribly huge.

This is a small race. There were 171 entered in the full marathon and 588 in the half.

The start was somewhat casual. We all kind of gathered at the corner of Court Street and Union. The national anthem was played. A cannon was shot off (we all jumped) and we were off.

We went along Union (down hill) out to parts of Athens I didn’t know existed: little league baseball diamonds, golf driving range, new apartment complexes… As the crowds thinned, we entered the bike trail along the Hocking River. From here the course was out and back.

One thing we noticed fairly early was that there were no mile markers. Luckily I was using the GPS on my Garmin, but without it, it would have been difficult to judge where I was in the race.

The bike trail was beautiful! The trees along the river gave plenty of shade and cut the wind somewhat. Most of the path was isolated, but every once in a while we passed very nice homes, a few not so nice homes, a few abandoned homes… It was great in a group, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable walking on this trail alone.

Because the course was mostly along the bike trail, there was very little crowd support. Where the trail crossed a road there were small groups of very enthusiastic people. And most of the water stations had some great cheerers.

Around mile 5 I was getting tired of being leap frogged by two women. They were not fast runners and were very slow walkers. Plus they were not paying attention to people coming from the other direction. I passed them and tried to get far enough ahead they would stop passing me. Unfortunately, Deb wasn’t able to keep up and we were separated. I should have slowed to let her catch up, but those two run/walkers prevented me from doing that.

Once Deb and I separated, the race became much more difficult for me. With no crowds and no one to talk to, each mile felt longer and longer. We both had iPods, but it just wasn’t enough to keep me going this time.

I’m sure part of this negative attitude was caused by my not training well enough and my fighting some minor injuries. Even when I tried to go faster, I was not physically able to go faster.

Thankfully, I finally reached Pruitt Field (the OU track) where we had to do 1.5 loops to finish. The woman right in front of me slowed as we crossed wet grass to get to the track, and I passed her as quickly as possible. (I hate when people slow down right in front of me.) I tried to pick up the pace on the track and did go slightly faster.

I heard my name called over the loud speaker and was handed my medal. I left the stadium, found Steve, had to walk a little ways to find water, then we went back to the track to wait for Deb. She was only 5 min behind me.

At the finish area there was plenty of water, chocolate milk, pizza and bananas.

My official finish time is 3:04:10, which is actually the gun time. Deb’s gun time is 3:09:35 and Steve was well ahead of us at 2:59:25. Our chip times were 3:03:17 for me, 3:08:42 for Deb and 2:58:33 for Steve.

Though I typically enjoy small races, I’m not so fond of races on bike trails. They tend to be more mentally difficult than races in town or with crowd support. And not having mile markers made this one a little tougher.

This race has a lot of positives — the race fee was very reasonable, the medals are great, the after race food was good — but it was a little too small for me and I don’t need to do it again.

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