First Half

The Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon and Half Marathon brought nearly 4,000 runners from 49 states and several friends from Kodiak to Anchorage's trails on Saturday. A slight breeze and mostly sunny skies made for excellent race day conditions at the start. While the picturesque course offering million dollar views of the Chugach Mountains and Cook Inlet made everyone a winner. I ran the half marathon course (my longest race distance to date) and Meg ran race support - meeting me at the finish with comfortable shoes and a dry shirt. During the race I was able to keep a steady pace and finish right at my goal. this was my first major individual race and it was really fun to be at the start with thousands of other folks pumped about running. To me it's evidence that humans are hard-wired to run in groups. For instance I've noticed that my times are much faster when running with someone else. Perhaps it's a vestige of our ancestral persistence hunting tactic: running = survival.