Congratulations to all of you who finished yesterday's Lincoln Marathon and half-marathon. In particular, congratulations to my mom who finished her first half-marathon in 2:58. Good work, mom! Did any of you participate yesterday?
I kept up my tradition of walking to Lamar's (at 48th and Pioneers) and eating a donut while watching the race. After that, Robbie and I zipped around town on the bike. Talk about perfect weather for that sort of thing.
Next year they're talking about expanding the field by another 25%, to 10,000 participants. That's a lot of people. I hope they can pull it off without ruining the character of the race. Sometimes huge is good, and sometimes it isn't. Huge, supportive crowds: good. Clogged routes and people tripping over one another: not good. I'm sure they're already thinking about those things, and that's great. But sometimes even obvious problems get overlooked. (It's the event planner's curse.) Consider the fact that this year nobody bothered to consider that wheelchairs don't have much zip on artificial turf. Oops.
Anyway, congratulations to all of the participants, and thank you to all of the folks who helped pull off another successful race. Good work all around.
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Kudos to all who took part. I couldn’t get over my down feelings of not getting signed up, and my training has gone to h*** since March 31. I’ve been injured and before Saturday hadn’t run in nearly 2 weeks.
So, idiot that I am, I decided to test my mettle and see if I had it in me to do 13.1 on my own. Instead of Mr. Wilson’s route (which was cool), I had a simpler route from my home.
The injuries and lack of training did me in at just over 8 miles. I was really bummed. I should look at the bright side and consider the fact that with a bad foot and no real running, that I could just hit the trail and do 8 miles. Instead, I just know that I didn’t do 13.1 - so my hat is off to all the good folks that did the full and did the half. Well done!
It was my first 13.1 mile race yesterday. I finished it in 1:45:55. It was an amazing experience. Maybe I will try for the full marathon next year. Thanks to all the people who came out to cheer us on. That helps out a lot.
Kirk, congrats. I think that’s a pretty good time for a first timer at that distance. Well done!
We had the motivational music blaring, a canopy up, and invited the neighbors over for brunch while we all camped out in my front yard to cheer on the runners. It was a fantastic time & I hope to do it again next year!
I know they’ve claimed they opened it up to 8,000 participants, but the official results only list around 6,100. I don’t know what happened to the other 1,900 runners that supposedly registered.
If there were only around 6,000, that would make a lot of sense, because the race didn’t seem to be any more crowded than last year. And the biggest surprise for me was how considerate all the runners were. This was my fifth year running Lincoln, and I never remember runners being so nice about getting over to the side of the road / trail to walk, being so courteous at the water tables, etc. It seems like there always some jerks and oblivious folks to gum up the works, but I thought the crowd was great this year.
One of the main selling points I use when trying to talk people in to running is how great the people of Lincoln are in getting out and cheering for the runners, and this year’s crowd was as good as ever.
In looking at the results, it looks like maybe 7,300 finishers. About 6,150 for the half, and 1,125 for the full. I only saw one wheelchair finisher listed - that cannot be right, can it?
As Fletch noted, it looks like Neal forgot to count the marathon runners. Apparently about 10% of the registrants didn’t finish. I don’t know if that’s normal or not.
And yes, Fletch, there was just one wheelchair participant. He got slowed significantly by the Memorial Stadium turf.
I presumed that with a marathon of this size and one that’s been around for so many years, that there would naturally be more than one wheelchair participant. With my aching foot, I could have ridden in a chair and still finished 2nd place no matter how long it took me, I guess.
Wouldn’t it be easy to still have wheelchairs finish inside the stadium, but peel off and finish there on a harder surface? Conversely, with that small amount of participation (I know this will offend someone and I don’t mean for it to), is it necessary to make much of a change for one entrant as opposed to the other 7,999 (or 9,999 next year)?
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