The 2nd Annual, Virginia Beach Rock 'N' Roll Half-Marathon, on Sunday, September 1, was a wet and humid success. In just one year, this race has grown into one of the nations largest half-marathon races. There were over 15,000 participants from all over the world. There was over $80,000 in prize money awarded, more than all other races in Virginia, combined. Just like the Cherry Blossom, the Kenyan's dominated in the men's division, taking all of the first 9 positions. The best the USA did was place 14th and 15th. Paul Tergat, age 33, had the winning men's time at 1:01:59. Adriana Fernandez of Mexico had the fastest women's time of 1:10:21.

Our own Reston Runner's women came away with three awards. Michele Dowling, wife of Keith Dowling of Boston Marathon fame and a 'honorary member' of Reston Runners, apparently is also an outstanding runner in her own right. Michele was the 5th woman overall to finish, in the regular running of the Half-Marathon, and she placed 2nd in her age group of 1078 women. She finished the course in 1:26:11, with an average pace of 6:34 Minutes per Mile!!! Our own Leslie Stanfield also led our unofficial team of 9-runners with a time of 1:53:08, this gave Leslie 5th Place out of 299 in her age group. Hiroko Hunt, also, endured the long, humid run to finish with a time of 2:42:13 to place 3rd out of 10 in her age group -- no more comments about there being only being 1 or 2 runners in the more senior groups, please.

Pat Brown, Leslie's significant other and running teammate, did such a good job of pacing Leslie to dramatically improve her overall running this year that, although he started out in an earlier corral and crossed the finish line first, he actually ended up finishing 48 seconds (net or chip time) behind Leslie at 1:53:56, adding another to the RR teammate upsets this year. A relative new Reston Runner, Meg Loudin, was the fourth overall Reston Runner to cross the finish line. Meg finished in a very great time of 1:54:44, placing 73 out of 577 in her (youthful) age group. Lou Ann Armstrong was the fifth Reston Runner to finish with a time of 1:58:02; she placed 104 out of 760 in her age group. Yours truly, Norm Hunt's, only claim to fame in this race was that I ran with Hiroko and encouraged her to do her best. However, as most of you can observe, aside from being too overweight to be a contender, I also did have the added, legitimate, excuse of running against my Doctor's advise, and completing the course with an acute stress fracture of the right tibia. Some of us are just not too smart and this obviously is not a recommended regimen to follow. Fortunately, I had no apparent additional damage. Claire Tse, eighth in our little team to finish, achieved her goal of finishing the course in 3 hours; she now moves on to targeting the New York City Marathon for a PR this November. Bringing up the rear, with a valiant effort of endurance, for temperatures in the high 70's and humidity in the high 90's, was George Royall, who finished the course in 4:16:25 hours. George did in fact still manage to finished 9,971 out of 10,982, overall, so he edged out slightly over 1,000 other finishers.

Hopefully, it should be apparent to everyone that while we all like to cheer for those of us who are fleet of foot enough to really run well and
place well, either overall or as an age group winner, we shouldn't forget to return to the course and cheer on our fellow teammates and runners,
who may in fact be out on the course 2 and 3 times as long as you were and who still complete the course, running on sheer endurance, determination, and "true grit" -- to them each race is like a mini-JFK. So congratulations  to all of our fellow teammates for their individual and valiant efforts, all well done.

All of the finishers got a really "groovy" Rock 'N' Roll beach/surfing scene medallion that is even heavier than the JFK Medal. If you are so inclined and go out to San Diego and/or Nashville and run in one of the other Rock 'N' Roll or Country Music Marathons in those cities, then you are also awarded an extra 39.3 miles medal (Pat and Leslie earned theirs this year); if you do all three you get a "Triple Crown" medal -- more marketing gimmicks to attract the well-traveled runner.

Sunday in Virginia Beach started out not as an expected hot and bright sunny day at the beach, but instead with a heavily overcast sky, that rained buckets, just before the race started at 7 AM. It continued to mist and sprinkle a little throughout the race, but never rained hard again and never cleared up, either. The course, is mostly a boring run down the back streets off the board walk of Virginia Beach, the only scenic parts are through the back entrance to the nearby Marine base, for about 3 miles, and the final 2+ miles on the boardwalk, "read concrete," beside the ocean. The rest is a long and uninspiring road run through strip malls and on Atlantic Avenue in the beachside town. There is only one hill, over a smallish high bridge at about the mile 1 and again at the mile 8 points, a gentle rise compared to the Annapolis bridge. There were bands located at about every mile and 750 high school cheerleaders scattered along the route, as well as a respectable number of locals and tourists out cheering on all the runners. The race had plenty of water and Gatorade out along the course, at least every two miles or less. Overall the Expo and the race management was very, very well done, with the professional for-profit Elite Running organization of San Diego Rock 'N' Roll fame managing the race, assisted by our own Randy Skovrinski who, as part of Capital Running, was subcontracted to place chip mats at the 5K, 10K, and 10 Mile marks on the course to ecord split times.

The Race finished with a food and beverage replenishment party, including Budweiser Beer, on the beach at 4th Street. This was followed by a Rock Band concert, free to Race participants, on Sunday evening. The Rock Group "Live" was the headliner band. The Parking was a little distant from the starting line, which meant an early rise in the morning, but there was plenty of free bus transportation provided to and from the parking area that was also very well organized and scheduled.

I would certainly recommend this race to those of you who would like to take a short trip away from the Reston area, in order to get out of town
with less than a 4 hour drive, yet run in a major race at a fun place, assuming the sun is shining, on the ocean. If you are interest in doing
this race next year look it up on their website at http://www.rnrhalf.com. If interested, let me know via email at hunt@software.org and we can start
planning to get a group of us together for the race next year and hopefully have even more fun and save a little on hotel costs, as well.

Good luck to all our runners, cyclists, and swimmers this weekend in the Reston Triathlon. Hope to see you there as a volunteer and/or to cheer all of them on to their personal victories.