Half Marathon Relay

Today we ran in the Indy 500 Festival Mini-Marathon (relay). The Indiana Guard unit sponsored the remote version at Salerno of this mini-marathon event. They claim this event has the most participation of any mini-marathon, that includes those of us in Afghanistan and Iraq that participate. Below is the team, before the race, all smiles, glad to be up early in the morning and ready to conquer the 13.1 miles. When we signed up we thought there were age brackets for the relay event, but that was only for the individual race. For the relay teams, no age brackets. We had already formed our team so this group of 40 somethings decided to take on all the young army and air force teams. We did pretty good at it too, finishing third. And, before you come up with the idea that there might only have been three teams, count the number of runners at the start line in the picture below.

There were twelve teams in the race, so not bad for some old air force engineers. Guess the last three months of time in the gym paid off. Yes that is my bald head, second from the right, in case you were having trouble finding me. I was checking out my watch to make sure the stop watch started so I could keep track of how slow I was running. This picture is prior to the race, still joking around in anticipation of the race.

We were beat by an army team and an air force team. Below is the air force team that beat us, I think the oldest one is 30. We have filed an appeal on the first and second place teams, they should be disqualified, making us the winners. The army team's first runner dropped out at about the 3 mile point, he must have eaten breakfast before the race. I did not look as I passed him, but he was doubled over. That was the only way I was going to catch him. Their #3 runner jumped in and finished the 4-mile leg. So, they should be DQ'd for running out of order. The air force team was so far ahead on the second leg, their runner missed a turn and ran off the course, no one to follow, running through the gravel pit, but around the hill the rest of us had to climb. I don't think it was any shorter and it may have been harder as it was off road. So, they should be DQ'd for leaving the course. Just kidding, we did not really file the appeal, but we had a lot of fun with them over it.

And, in case you don't believe me about our 3rd place finish, here we are accepting the third place certificate. Yes, we did fire the photographer for taking such a lousy picture, he could have stepped in front of the official photographer (the head of black hair) and waited for the presenter to get out of the way. The stats for our race - I ran the 4 mile leg in about 32 minutes and the other 3 ran the rest of the 13.1 miles (3, 3, and 3.1 miles) in 1 hour and 14 minutes for a total time of 1 hour 46 minutes. We felt pretty good about that time until we heard the winning times for the individual racers, several of them were faster than our time.

In case you are wondering why I am in uniform and the rest of the team is still in their PT uniform, or if you're thinking I did not run, there are a couple explanations. I ran first so I had time to go back to the room and shower before the others finished the race. Or, maybe because I spilled the gatorade, I tried to drink while running, all over the front of my shirt and decided to change for the picture. The real reason, we finished the race before 9:30 and the awards ceremony was not until noon after the individual race and there is no hat to wear with the PT uniform and I needed to protect my bald head from the hot Afghanistan sun.