The trip to Florida got off to a rough start which would be the theme for the entire weekend for me. After boarding the plane at the Philadelphia airport, we were told that the plane would need to be deiced and that would cause us a delay. No problem I figured, so I called my parent's home phone to let them know that the plane would be late. No one picked up so I just left a message on the house phone voicemail. The flight ended up landing about 45 minutes late in Tampa. As I turned my phone on there were six voicemail messages for me. My stepfather had to be admitted to the hospital caused by a swelling in his leg from a blood clot. He recently had hip replacement surgery and then had a stroke while doing physical therapy for his hip. My mom left me a message that she wouldn't be able to pick me up and called some of their neighbors and arranged for me to get a ride with Rich and Marianne, who were going to be in the Tampa area anyhow. Unfortunately, they didn't know the plane was going to be late so they waited patiently for me to finally get there.
I came out of baggage claim and was able to spot them pretty quickly in the Arrivals pickup. They took me over to the Expo at Tropicanna field to pick up my race stuff. The Expo was right on the baseball field where the Tampa Bay Rays play which I thought was pretty neat. My only complaint with this race was that you had to pay $10 to park at Tropicanna Field to go to the Expo. We were lucky and found a spot right outside the parking lot so we didn't pay, but I had prepaid for a space on race morning to avoid any hassles. I eventually got to my Mom's house late in the afternoon and waited for my mom to get home from the hospital. After she did get home, she had to bring glasses to my stepfather in the hospital so we stopped by the hospital before going to dinner at the Inn on the Gulf. It was good to see him but he was certainly not happy being in the hospital.
I woke up early on race day because it's almost an hour drive to St. Petersburg from my parent's house. plus the race organizers were closing the parking lot at 6:30 AM so I wanted to make sure that I was parked before then. I had kept an eye on the weather all week and saw that it was supposed to be in the 40's on race morning which I thought would be perfect for running. Luckily at the last minute, I threw my long running pants, a sweatshirt and running gloves into my suitcase. I don't know if it was really 40 degrees or not, but I'm quite sure with the wind chill it was closer to 20 degrees. It was not comfortable at all and since I knew I was very chilled, I could only imagine how the Floridians were coping with it.
The race got off to a good start, even with the cold weather, and I found the 1:45 pace group so I tried to stay with them. Around the fourth mile, I started having severe intestinal pains. I gutted it out for two more miles hoping that it would pass but at the six mile marker I saw some port-a-johns and made the stop. The pace group was going a minute faster than they should have been at that point so I didn't lose much time and still could have made my goal of 1:45. The course winded through some neighborhood streets and then came to a park that runs along the waters of Tampa Bay. This is where it would get really cold as the wind blowing off the water was just a biting, frigid cold. I wasn't comfortable to begin with and I was really feeling it going around the St. Pete Pier. My time was slowing again and I didn't think 1:45 would be possible so I just kept gutting it out and trying to get it over with.
One the funnier things that happened during this race was that I needed to check in for my Southwest flight while the race was going on. Around the 12.5 mile mark, I had the Southwest app on my iPhone loaded with my flight info so that I just had to press a button to check in for the flight. It actually worked well and I was in the "A" boarding group for my flight back home the following morning. Nearing the end of the race, I saw the Finish line but just didn't have anything for a sprint to the finish. I gutted out a 1:48:17 time which was a slight improvement over my last half-marathon but below my expectations. After finishing, I had the race photographer picture me Tebowing as that was the latest trend. I wanted to do it right before the Finish line but there were a lot of people and it might have been dangerous.
The course was great, just the weather made it very tough run, but you can't really control that. I chalked it up as a character building race and hope that it would help me be better in future races. The post-race concert was headlined by Flo-Rida. I had previously arranged to meet up after the race with Mark Bagley who is a Delta Chi fraternity brother from UPJ and lives in Tampa with his wife Mandi. They both ran the race and we met up at the beer tent and then headed over to Ferg's for lunch. It was great catching up with them since it had been about 20 years since I graduated and last seen him.
On my way home, I called my mom to see if she was at the hospital with my stepfather. He had actually been discharged and was resting at home. I guess there really wasn't much they could do with him so they sent him home. It was good seeing him when I got back to the house after a disappointing race. I guess all's well that end's well. The next morning, I was up early again to catch my flight home.
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