New year, first race of 2013, might as well take myself to San Antonio and some 60-70 degree weather!! I found the Cocoa Half Marathon online back in October and Southwest was running a 40% off fare deal so that’s how this trip came to be!! A few weeks ago, this went from being most of 1/18- 1/21 to a late Friday night to Sunday night trip thanks to work.
I got in Friday night around 10:50 and thankfully was at my hotel by the Alamo by 11:30. After a partial room upgrade and 2 free breakfast tickets, off I went to crash. Saturday morning, I took full advantage of breakfast before hiking my way 1/2 a mile plus to the Marriot hotel where the expo was. Note, this was the inaugural Cocoa Half and the expo was fairly small. We had to look up our bib numbers when we got there. Mini Crisis: I couldn’t find my name (they were in last name order and let’s face it, my name isn’t that common). Go in and ask what’s up, had to check under my first name and there I was! Here’s the bib:
Afterwards, I set out to visit The Guenther House. I love things with my last name! I may have went on a bit of a shopping spree here to boot. I hiked back to my hotel (1 mile plus in the other direction) with my goods and after a second breakfast. I took advantage of the Alamo, the River Walk, San Fernando Cathedral and some other sites before heading in to call it a night.
This morning, I woke up around 7 and realized I hadn’t charged up my garmin. I plugged it in while I was getting ready and thankfully it still had a bulk of it’s charge and needed to get an extra boost. Weather wise, it was in the mid 50s or so as I headed to the start around King Williams Historical District. I got there about 15 minutes before the start. No corrals or anything and about 1700 people total. The half had the option of doing it as a relay and there was also a 5K option. As we’re getting final instructions, we find out that the course was altered last minute, which is fine. I just didn’t realize how much.
We started on time and spent the first 3 miles or so on the street. It really seemed like we were seeing a lot of S. Alamo Rd, some of the scenic River Walk and the 1968 World’s Fair Park. At about mile 3.5ish, we headed onto the River Walk paths and the Mission Trail for a bulk of the rest of the race. As we were running, I noticed that we were about .15-.2 miles short on course. It was kind of frustrating and I’m wondering why they had to move things to the side walk, but that’s what had to be done I guess. As I hit mile 6, the lead runner was on her way back (it was her mile 10). At the relay switch point, we had our first bit of elevation, which wasn’t bad. We kept going and went past the Mission Conception. I wish I had some way to visit there, but had no way to get out there on my visit. We did a loop around something which brought us to mile 9 and the relay check point. And the lone hill of the course. As we weaved through miles 10-12, we started to see more of the city from the River Walk. When we crossed the finish, I had 12.70ish on my Garmin (I ended up running to make up the difference). My chip time was 2:07:27 which put me at 25th in my age group.
Post race, they had local vendors with different forms of Chocolate. Chocolate chip pancakes, fudge, chocolate ginger cookies, fondue, pineapple/bananas, etc. All was delicious!!!!
Overall, I think this race did well for it’s first year. I think it has a few things to work on, but overall a good experience. Hopefully they can get the course glitch figured out, but I think they’ll do well for themselves in the future!
drrunner 