OUC Half Marathon and 5K 2010 Review

OUC Half Marathon and 5K 2010 Review

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Please excuse me if this race report is not in the usual format or has some typos.  I am sick and not thinking very clearly.  I have a darn cold.

On Saturday I participated in the OUC Half Marathon in Orlando, Florida.  This race starts at Lake Eola and winds around the streets of the city of Orlando. 

The beneficiary of this race was the Florida Citrus Sports Foundation.  This foundation “serves as the charitable arm of Florida Citrus Sports and is committed to improving the lives, health, and education of children in our community through the following programs: Take Stock in Children, Florida Citrus Sports Summer Camp, Day for Kids, and the Dream Ticket Clearinghouse.” SOURCE

Before the race

 Today was the coldest day of this winter here in Orlando.  The temperature at the start of the race was a freezing 45F.  But being Florida it is hard to judge what to wear because it always quickly warms up.  By the end of the race it was 61F.  So during the race you have to peal off layers of clothing and carry them along the race.  It is always a pain to run in the cold in Florida.  I had to start off the race with a fleece thermal layer, a long running shirt, a running jacket, gloves and a winter hat.  By the end of the race I had strip off the gloves, hat, the jacket and really need to drop the thermal layer.  I started off the race freezing and end the race sweating.

Lake Eola (The race start)

Lake Eola and the ugly "Married with Children" water fountain

This was a very large local race.  The race had over 3000 runners participating in the half marathon.  The start of the race was very crowded and it took about a mile and a half to clear up.  The race than ran through the streets of Orlando.  These are the same streets I travel on every day.  I have seen these streets over a thousand times a year.  The race path even ran within a block of my house.  I could have thrown a stone and hit my house if I wanted to. 

Pretty and mean swan at Lake Eola

 This familiar route made the race seem like a typical training day.  Same old sights and I knew exactly what was around the next corner.  What made it worse is I could tell exactly how much further I had to travel.  But if you were not familiar with the route it was not too bad but it definitely is not a very scenic route.  It is just a bunch of neighborhood houses.  It is very similar to the route used in the 12th Annual Chick-fil-a Miracle Miles 15K.

White Egret at Lake Eola

 There was plenty of water stops around the route.  There were 8 water stops each placed 1.5 miles apart.  Each had the typical water and Gatorade but nothing else.  There were also plenty of Port-o-lets at the beginning of the race and two Port-o-lets at each water station.

All the volunteers and police officers were great.  . The race volunteers where eager to cheer you one and hand out water.  There where police officers at every major interception holding back traffic.  This must have caused many motorists some major headaches.  The blocking of many of downtown Orlando’s intersections quickly created traffic congestion.  They changed the route this year so it would not include so much cobblestone roads but still much of the race was run on these knee killers.

The race was reasonably priced.  The price of the race was between $45-$55 (depending on when you registered).  With the registration you got the typical long sleeve tech shirt.

The post race area had about 10 tents with people handing out the usual bags, coupons, advertisements, etc.  The weird part was nearly all the tents were empty with no one in them.  Those manning the tents ran out of everything they were handing out by the two hour half marathoners finished the race.

The post race grub included the typical water, sports drinks, bagels and bananas.  There was a DJ playing music and inflatable slides and moonwalks for the little kids.  The cool part of the post race was you got TWO FREE BEERS.  Quinton would have loved this race!! After two beers maybe he would stop whining about not getting a RUNNER RUNNER RUNNER shirt (although I also am feeling a little left out :-(  ).

Free beers and race bling

 The race results were posted on the internet about 2 hours after the race.  This was very quick and it really surprised me.

Overall this was a good race.  It was run by the local running store Track Shack.  Any race they put on is always good, very well organized and greatly planned out.  I was close to home and it was cheap so it definitely beat another boring training run.  I would give the race a C+.  I would have graded it a B but the cobblestone roads, boring route and lack of variety at the water stops caused it to drop to a C+.  I will do the race again and I would recommend it to others.

Mr Half TRI-ing

My race results were not my best but they were not bad.  If you look at my completed races you can see why I took it easy on this run.  I have had an extremely packed couple of months with nearly no weekends off.  I finished the race with at 2:07:44 with a 9:45 pace. 


Triston and Bonnie also did this race.  Bonnie has also had a packed race schedule.  She did two full marathons in 8 days followed by this 13.1.  She became a marathon maniac last week.  She was so excited she had to pose in her new shirt as soon as she got it.


 Triston PRed on this race.  He finished at 2:34:25 with an 11:47 pace.

Triston and Me

The family post race