Journey to Mars

I picked up another state in my 50 state half marathon or greater distance quest this past weekend. It was my first new state in almost 6 months and it will be a little over 6 months before I complete state number 33 in Chicago this October.

The Martian half marathon is held in Dearborn, MI just outside of Detroit along with the final 1.2 miles of a kids marathon, a 10k and a marathon. They had around 2200 people running in Sunday's marathon/half marathon combined start. The tech race shirt given at the expo was clearly the most colorful race shirt that I have received to date.

The course was mostly flat on roads that had many potholes; I guess they would call these craters on Mars. In my calendar on athlinks.com, I predicted a 1:59:00 finish time due to my low mileage since mid January due to tendonitis in my lower left achilles. My finish time was 1:58:42... within 18 seconds of my projected time so I guess I should be alright with the performance. The achilles injury plus related weight gain due to inactivity have really slowed me down from just a year ago. I hope to get back in shape in time to begin my June training for Chicago. My mile splits from Sunday along with my 1/2 PR splits last February were:

Mile 1: 9:22/7:52

Mile 2: 8:53/7:33

Mile 3: 8:47/7:35

Mile 4: 8:50/7:13

Mile 5: 8:42/7:10

Mile 6: 8:48/7:30

Mile 7: 8:49/7:28

Mile 8: 8:50/7:22

Mile 9: 8:53/7:32

Mile 10: 9:29/7:42

Mile 11: 9:22/7:35

Mile 12: 9:26/7:30

Last 1.1: 10:24/9:02

Total: 1:58:42/1:39:05

I've been reading alot lately about the airline industry's poor record in flight on time arrivals and such over the past couple of years. I traveled to at least 10 half marathons in 2006 and 2007 and only experienced weather related delays on a couple of instances. I experienced first hand in both my flight to and return from Detroit this past weekend how tight airlines are operating these days. My Continental flight out of IAH Saturday morning was supposed to depart at 10:20 putting me in Detroit mid afternoon with plenty of time to check into the hotel and make it to the expo to pick up my packet. Due to unknown mechanical issues (I guess it's better not knowing sometimes) the flight was delayed over 4 hours. The one good thing about the delay is that the plane was being worked on in a hangar and we were not on board the plane. I ended up getting in my rental car at 7:30 and rushed to the expo to get my packet right before it shut down at 8:00.

My return flight was on Northwest. I got to the airport early and was able to get onto an earlier flight. We boarded the plane about 10 minutes later than planned, taxied to the runway, had a sensor fail and had to taxi back. A quick fix was performed while we remained on board and we taxied out a 2nd time only to have the same problem and had to taxi back to the gate again. A more extensive repair was done while we remained on board and after over a 2 hour delay spent on board the aircraft we taxied a 3rd time and finally took off. I'm glad I have over 2 months before my next scheduled trip. It really amazed me that both Continental at IAH and Northwest in Detroit, both major hubs for the respective airlines, did not have standby planes available.