Sara Blabs: Hill Country Halloween "Virtual" Half Marathon Race Report

This is a unique race recap in that I didn’t get to run the ACTUAL race. It was canceled thanks to hurricane Patricia and her heavy ass rains and flooding. I woke up at about 4am, well over an hour before my alarm was set to go off, but just couldn’t sleep. On top of the race and anxiety over whether it would be on or canceled plus another stress item that was affecting me, I had big issues going to sleep and staying that way Saturday night. I laid in bed for about 10 minutes after the alarm went off before getting up and getting ready. I had gotten most of my things gathered before going to bed the night before. Part of my anxiety when I woke up at 4am was what I was going to wear. I didn’t really want to wear my costume because I didn’t want it to get ruined and decided on my muscle and tendon leggings and a pink running pullover, but a red poncho on top of that.

I left my apartment just before 6am and stopped at Starbucks for my usual pre-race caffeine fix of their cold brew iced coffee…so yummy! I then made my way to the Cedar Park Center in Cedar Park, TX where the race was to start and end. I got there and parked. There were about 3-4 other vehicles already there. I then checked my email and Penteli Events had literally JUST sent out the email stating that the race was canceled. They said that packets would be available for pickup at Rogue Running, including our race medals, later in the day. So, my plan was to go around noon and pick up my packet then run the 13.1 on my own.

I did not run the 13.1 later the same day that the race was supposed to be. I had all that stress and lack of sleep and ended up crashing on the couch after I got all my errands done and by the time I got up it was after 5pm and I did not want to run in the cold(ish) temp with the rain and in the dark. That just didn’t sound fun at all. So I opted to wait for the following day. I headed out just before 2pm for my now virtual half marathon. Since it was chilly, I wore a pullover on top of my shirt to keep me warm. This meant that both my FitBit and my Garmin would be hidden from easy access view, so I opted to run strictly by feel and keep it at a comfortably hard effort. My overall average pace was 11:17 minutes so I’m happy with that. This was definitely nowhere near my fastest half marathon time by quite a bit at 2:27:55. But, it is also nowhere near my slowest.

I did not dress up in my costume to run this race as a virtual race, but I did have a little fun with what I was wearing. I had bought some muscle and tendon leggings a while back and slipped those on over a pair of my running capris. I ran the distance and then I slapped on my bib and took my own official race photo! One good thing about running a race virtually is that you don’t have to wait a week or two for race photos to post…oh and then you don’t have to pay for them either.

I am really looking forward to actually running this race next year. I’m sad that I didn’t get to run with my running buddy, Rob. We met for the first time in person (we’d been social media friends for a few months already) at this race last year. I am very happy that the race director and staff have made a good effort to ensure everyone got their shirts, bibs and medals even though the race was canceled. I am very happy that there was a custom bib this year. If you’ll remember I was extremely disappointed last year to learn that they were using generic RoadID bibs. Last year’s shirt was fantastic. It was an attractive design and it was tech material. This year’s shirt is attractive but not tech material, so this is very disappointing to me.