Quick report on The Other Half

I'm about to head out of town for our Grand Canyon raft trip and so I don't have much time for a report. In brief: 1:38:37, not a PR but my best time on this course, 2nd AG (16 seconds behind the winner, who I tried in vain to catch up with over the final 4 miles), 9th OA woman. I was running really well and feeling good, covered the first 6 rolling miles at a 7:16 pace; the next two were a bit slower because of the big uphill, but when I topped out at mile 8, the wind hit, and the last 5.2 miles were into a ferocious headwind that slowed me down and sapped my will to live. I was expecting to give up a little on the uphills but make up most of it on the downhills, but I couldn't even run fast downhill. (The woman who beat me ran a 1:35:xx last year, so obviously she was affected by the wind as well.)

I did have to post the photo above, though, because it makes me giggle. I fell in with this guy in the cheerleader's outfit somewhere in the middle and we chatted for a while. He had a French accent and said that when he discovered how comfortable skirts were, he decided to run all his races in a skirt - and besides, people always cheered for him when he went by. He took off ahead of me on one of the hills, but I caught up with him and passed again near mile 11 and ended up finishing about a minute and a half ahead of him.

As beautiful and well-organized as the Moab races are, I think I'm done with them for a while. The last three half-marathons I've run there were brutally windy (as well as the last 10K, although that wasn't bad since it's not in a canyon), and it's just not fun running into a headwind. Time to move on and find some new races.