Saltair Half Marathon

The only award I should have earned for this race was "World's Worst Dad" award.  I had been in the hospital since Tuesday evening because my wife gave birth to our first kid.  Luckily she let me slip away for a few hours for this race, but I was pretty sleep deprived and had an awful diet leading up to it.

The race was on a flat, out-n-back course that I thought was good for a true time.  I felt like the first half was pretty conservative, but I couldn't get rid of a load of gas that kept giving me side aches.  The first and second runners were blazing fast, and I was just hoping to stay with a pack of three other runner so I could pass them up once my gas went away.  Unfortunately, at the turn-around, my side aches got a lot worse and Nelson and some German guy named Thomas took off.  At one point I had to stop and do some bicycles on my back in hopes that the stitches would go away, and it helped a little.  I finished in 5th place with a 1:18:48.  Hats off to Nelson who killed me by two minutes.