Race Recap: Beat the Blerch Virtual Half Marathon

Beat the Blerch Virtual Half Marathon 11/1/18 Cedar Falls, IA

Weather: 40 degrees, sunny
Terrain: Recreation trails and some sidewalks

Distance: 13.1 miles

A recap for a virtual race? Why not? This will be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Essentially, I was my own race director. Any complaints or constructive compliments (tm The Office) will be directed mostly toward myself.

To start: the kit, made by the guy who does The Oatmeal online comics and featuring "the blerch," is awesome. There is a tech-fabric t-shirt, a medal (with a little door that opens up to show the food inside the Blerch's stomach), a stress ball, sunglasses, and a sticker. At $50 it's a bit pricey, but what you get it very cool and I like supporting The Oatmeal. The kit, as far as virtual race kits go, gets an A from me.

The rest of the race experience is entirely up to me as the end consumer, so here we go. I decided to start and end from the most logical place: my house. It took me a (sadly) long time to map out exactly 13.1 miles in a nice tidy loop, trying to avoid more wooded trails that would have too many leaves and bits of detritus for me to trip over or roll my ankle on. Once I had finally settled on a course, I waited for a beautiful Thursday where the weather was fine, which happened to be after three consecutive days of hard workouts. OH WELL, let's see how this goes!

The first couple miles were largely downhill, since I live in a high part of town. I tried not to think about how I would then have to go uphill for the last couple of miles. (What idiot designed this course?) There was a heated bathroom around mile 4, which was brilliant. Water stops were not a problem, as I had my Camelbak, but the on-course nutrition was gross. I had these Clif Bloks from my Spartan Beast that I'd never eaten. Turns out they taste like someone made strawberry Gushers with a handful of household dust, but they worked, dammit. I had plenty of energy. There were not many folks out on the course that day and ZERO spectators, except for the lady who was smoking outside the gas station at mile 11. But I was able to keep up a decent jogging pace almost the whole time, only walking a few steep uphill portions for a total of maybe 5 minutes of the total race time. 

I'd never run for over 2 hours before, so the last couple miles uphill featured some abysmal posture. But I was overall very pleasantly surprised with how much of an effort I was able to put out after doing spin classes on Monday and Wednesday prior. My pacing was even and I crossed "the finish line" in 2:30 flat. Considering my previous half marathon PR was 2:41 and change, I was totally thrilled. The post-race food spread was the greatest I'd ever seen: Panera mac and cheese and a Diet Pepsi. Great work, Race Director!

Pros:

-Swag. What a great kit.

-Race was very uncrowded and low-key.

-I knew every inch of the course in advance.

Cons:

-No mile markers. What laziness.

-No spectators or fellow participants. Had to provide own "jush."

-Hard for a virtual race to feel "official." But I'm calling that a PR, dammit.

Race Grade: A-. The cons of it "not being an actual race" were overshadowed by how freakin' awesome I did and how delicious that lunch was afterward. Choosing your own post-race spread: highly recommended.