"We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty."
George Washington
This year the race was lowered from 5 miles to 4. No matter. I still bonked. This time just after the 3 mile marker. I turned onto Hillsborough St. for the last mile and was wiped from the minor incline on W. Park St.
The water stop was the clincher. I slowed to a walk, took the cup of water and kept walking. I could not even drink because I could not slow my breathing enough to even sip. Eventually I drank and resumed a slow jog. But I knew I had blown it in terms of being competitive in my age group. No doubt I walked for at least two minutes. And that was not enough. I walked yet again one more time within that last mile.
However, I did sprint the last 20 meters or so when a runner came up on my left. Thank you runner! I managed therefore to finish in under 40 minutes which was really my goal. Not by much, but still ....
The weather was not a problem,low humidity and temperature and the route took us through several interesting residential areas.
There were 350 runners and NCRC had lots of great volunteers out there.
The fastest male at 15 years old was Thomas Graham with a time of 20:56; the fastest female was Brennan Liming (33) with a time of 23:15. The time of the median finisher was 34:13. And 76 year-old Edwin Harris had a finish time of 30:48!
