It looks like my final event for 2008 was a success. The US Half on Sunday in San Francisco turned out to be a wonderful race and as my last registered event for the year, I’m glad to say that it was a good note to end the year on.

Did I post a PR? No. Did I get to run in costume? No. Did I find a million dollar bill on the Golden Gate Bridge and change the event to the Pavement Runner Half? No. But with all those things not happening I still had a great time. I had originally planned to run in costume, but the potential of rain meant I wasn’t going to be able to. So I wore normal running clothes and am saving the costume unveiling for a future event.

As for my time, I had always viewed this as a training run, a very slow training run. With me still recovering from some bad IT band issues a month ago, there was no way I was going to come close to my sub 2 hour PR, I was going to be happy coming in under 3 hours, which I did (2:43). Some fellow friends smashed on the course put up wonderful times and many had amazing PRs. The course was full of hills, up and down, and since I didn’t want to agitate any IT band issues, it meant walking every single one of them, up and down. I hadn’t expected so many, but it turned out to be a nice break and allowed me to stop and enjoy the SF scenery during a run. There was a slight sprinkle for about 20 mins, but overall, the weather was cooperative and ended up being great running weather. With the rain clouds slowly moving, a beautiful rainbow hit the Golden Gate perfectly and I don’t doubt that everyone that ran, thought it was one of the highlights of the days event.