...Let's walk through what happened today.
At the crack of dawn, with an honor guard on watch, I arrived at the Columbia City courthouse at 6:00am to wait for the arrival of our official course certifier, and all-round race director guru Mac McAvoy, and local running expert Sam Bird. The streets were quiet and restful, as were those who spent their evening tucked in at the "Comfort Gazebo" on the courthouse square.
After locating the 1/2-mile course calibration pins (actually nails) we installed a month ago on a flat, straight section, Mac carefully fine-tuned his bicycle to the weather conditions, his body weight, and the fancy odometer do-hickey on his front tire, then made four trial runs with the courthouse dome awash in the morning glow, and cranked through all the numbers he needed for each mile interval of the course.
Mac biked the second half and Sam marked off the miles. They talked about terrain, they talked about tangents, they talked about what to eat for lunch. But lunch came later, after Sam biked the entire course, making sure our ends matched our beginnings, after first adjusting the finish line. They didn't of course match, so we adjusted the starting line. Now in the mid-afternoon heat and wind, Mac made a repeat ride over the second half and nailed it - well not exactly nailed it - since installing actual mile markers will have to be done next time when we repeat the entire process for the half and full marathon, at least twice again.
By day's end (4:00 pm), we had managed to move the finish line from the southwest corner of the courthouse to the southeast corner - and we all agreed - quite an accomplishment. We'll keep you posted on what happens next.
So what did I do? I got to ride around in my truck all day - man I'm beat.
At the crack of dawn, with an honor guard on watch, I arrived at the Columbia City courthouse at 6:00am to wait for the arrival of our official course certifier, and all-round race director guru Mac McAvoy, and local running expert Sam Bird. The streets were quiet and restful, as were those who spent their evening tucked in at the "Comfort Gazebo" on the courthouse square.
After locating the 1/2-mile course calibration pins (actually nails) we installed a month ago on a flat, straight section, Mac carefully fine-tuned his bicycle to the weather conditions, his body weight, and the fancy odometer do-hickey on his front tire, then made four trial runs with the courthouse dome awash in the morning glow, and cranked through all the numbers he needed for each mile interval of the course.
Mac biked the second half and Sam marked off the miles. They talked about terrain, they talked about tangents, they talked about what to eat for lunch. But lunch came later, after Sam biked the entire course, making sure our ends matched our beginnings, after first adjusting the finish line. They didn't of course match, so we adjusted the starting line. Now in the mid-afternoon heat and wind, Mac made a repeat ride over the second half and nailed it - well not exactly nailed it - since installing actual mile markers will have to be done next time when we repeat the entire process for the half and full marathon, at least twice again.
By day's end (4:00 pm), we had managed to move the finish line from the southwest corner of the courthouse to the southeast corner - and we all agreed - quite an accomplishment. We'll keep you posted on what happens next.
So what did I do? I got to ride around in my truck all day - man I'm beat.
