For my March half, 3rd of twelve planned for the year, I chose one close to home, and dear to my local running community: The 48th Sam Costa Half Marathon.
This race has been around for ever, a staple of Central Indiana running. It's named in memory of a Chicago Police Department detective who used to drive 200 miles to train with his Carmel, IN based running buddies. (You can read a more complete history here.)
The Costa is well run, has a nice local feel, is not too big, and not too small. Big enough that you feel like you're running a half marathon, small enough you can find a parking spot 20 minutes before the start.
Given that the race is traditionally late winter or early spring, the weather can be hit or miss, but this year, it was 50-ish, and the threatened rain never showed.
The only thing not great about the Sam Costa... is the course.
(Click to see the course in a new window.)
The course makes extensive use of nearby (lovely) neighborhoods. The first 3 miles is typical Indiana suburbia with lots of tight turns, some "multi-use trail", which is essentially a double-wide asphalt sidewalk, and some short stretches of decent road. With just 470 finishers, it wasn't crowded, but negotiating the turns and the transitions from trail to street and back kept you on your toes.
Miles 3 through 8 are the only miles not in suburbia. There were some decent stretches where you could get into a groove. Unfortunately, this year, those stretches seemed to always be dead into the wind. The northern most extent of the course was especially brutal... a long, straight, rolling beat into a stiff wind on a road frequented by gravel trucks and the accompanying ultra-fine dust sand-blasting your eyeballs.
From mile 8 to the finish, it was all twisty, turny neighborhood streets. I felt like I was constantly turning, or preparing to turn.
On tired legs, 5 miles from the finish, you don't want to think about tangents and curbs and manholes and sewer inlets... you want your mind to drift off to a happy place, you want to fall into a groove and let those miles pass.
It might not seem like a big deal, but with every change in direction, you lose forward momentum. I'm not making that up, it's physics. And with every turn you have to work to regain that lost momentum. And there were so... many... turns.
Eventually we popped out of one of the anonymous neighborhoods into the street that lead to the church, the church perched high on a hill, the same hill where the finish line was. Finally, the end was imaginable.
Coming toward me, taking the course the wrong way, presumably on a cool down (uhg, I hate it when people trot by on their cool down when I haven't finished yet, especially when they are young, and thin, and have great hair), was a young man who urged me on, "looking good, just 200 meters".
I wished I'd stopped right there, turned around, and officially declared bullshit, right to his face. We were AT LEAST 600 meters out. Probably 800. This young, fast, thin dude with great hair was either being WAY too patronizing to those of us still running, thinking somehow that if we thought we were only 200m out it was going to keep us from quitting. Or, maybe he was EXCEPTIONALLY bad at judging distance. Or perhaps both. To survive what must have been 23,000 turns and sand-blasted retinas only to be insulted and/or unfathomably misled by all that hair... it was just too much.
Fueled by self-righteous disdain I trudged up the stupid twisty (of course) hill to the stupid church parking lot and crossed the stupid finish line: 1:59:33. Again, inconsequentially under 2 stupid hours.
And then... I started to dry heave.
I was dry heaving as if it were the second phase of some disturbing duathlon, one in which I'd given up A LOT of ground in the 13 mile run leg and was determined to make it all up in the dry heave leg.
I haven't horked up nothing like this is ages. No idea why, but it was happening, and it was happening violently. So much so that twice... in two separate heaving episodes times just a few seconds apart... I was pretty sure I was going to pass out, because, you know, I was vomiting air, not inhaling it. This was some serious heaving.
Eventually, miraculously, it stopped... the tunnel vision cleared... I was ok to walk. I forced down a banana and a cookie, got my medal, and drove just 10 minutes home.
I love the idea of the Sam Costa. It's local running at its best. It's inexpensive, it's close to my home, the people are fantastic, the hosting church is a perfect venue, and hell, they even have actual Gatorade at the water stops. I'm glad I ran it again. But it'll be awhile before I'm back. I'll have to be in the kind of shape where I'm not counting miles-to-go in my head, when I can just run, and flow carelessly around all those stupid corners.
Next up, Carmel Half.
If you'd like to catch up on the year in halfs so far, here are links:
- Jan: runDisney StarWars half at Disneyland
- Feb: Gasparilla Half in Tampa FL
Doug
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