For the Love of the Shoes

Well, I didn't win a pair of free shoes thing morning. No one did.

Irony: We have not had any rain in Texas in MONTHS (literally months), yet it rained so hard this morning that they canceled the half-marathon I was supposed to run.

This is how my morning went: wake up at 4:30 to drive to Austin for the half-marathon. A torrential downpour started on my way to the race, making me scared for my life driving on I-35 because I literally could not see anything. I finally made it to the race, only to find mass chaos. The police were directing us all over the place, so I literally drove in circles for 20 minutes trying to figure out what the hell was going on and where we were supposed to park. Luckily, I then got a text from a friend that the race had been canceled. I'm annoyed. But, nothing I can do but head back home.

I'm back home around 7 am and I am hopped up on coffee, so there was no going back to sleep. We get an email saying the race has been canceled due to lightning, heavy rain and some flooding on the course. At this point, I am more annoyed that I got up so early and drove 45 minutes for a race that was canceled AND that I gave up what could have been a long training day yesterday to rest for today's race that did not happen. I was also annoyed by the lack of communication about the race cancellation once I got to the race site. The police kept directing us to turn right once we got to the race start which threw us onto Airport Blvd wondering what the hell was going on - so we all followed each other, driving down the road trying to figure out where we were being directed. Some sort of notification would have been nice as opposed to wasting my gas and freaking out that I was lost.

I'm a race director so I get it: sometimes you have to make a hard call to cancel a race (or sometimes a decision is made for you). Was it unsafe to run the race at 7 am when the race was scheduled to run? Yes. Was it unsafe to run at 8 am once the rain let up and lightning had cleared? No. Why not wait an hour and delay the start of the race? Especially since everyone was already down there and had woken up at the crack of dawn and made the effort to make it to the race start. 3M Half has done that before. Why not make every effort to try and make the race happen at that point. Had they made the call earlier to cancel the race, I would not have been so annoyed, but to make it so late in the game...that bothered me.

I race all the time, so whatever, I'm annoyed but I have more races coming up. I know this race had a TON of first time half-marathoners. Those are the ones I feel bad for. All of that hard work for nothing...no refund, no reschedule of the race? C'mon....I just hope it doesn't turn people off from these type of events. I think the race director will take a lot of flack for not offering some sort of compensation for making such a last minute decision.

I ended up going out for 16 miles on my own at 7:45 am once the lightning cleared. I wasn't going to let a canceled race rain (literally) on my parade. But, I am admittedly stubborn and semi-crazy. Sorry to everyone else that didn't get to race or run today. My suggestion: San Antonio 1/2 Marathon. I guarantee you'll enjoy it a lot more than See Jane Run.