Alameda Runners – Get After It!

Crossing the finish line

Since I have a minor injury that stops me from running completely, I decided to volunteer for the Summer Breeze half marathon in San Leandro.  My job was to go around and take pictures.  I would pick the biggest Brazen race of the year to be the photographer.  I am typing this as some of the pictures resize.  I am resizing them in groups of 400.  I took over 4,000 pictures.

Walking around as the photographer puts things a new perspective.  I slowly progressed in my half marathon life.  I am not at the point where a summer half marathon is a short training day.  I forgot what it was like at the beginning where it is a great accomplishment to finish a 13.1 mile run.  I could see the top 2 or 3 finishers were happy.  The next 100 finisher were mostly finishing like it was no big deal.  The rest were the new guys who were ecstatic to be crossing the line.  It was a lot of fun being around the people who were doing there first event and were so happy to just be out doing it.  I had people come up asking to have their picture taken because they did their first 10K together.

The Brazen events are always fun.  They are usually hilly and hard.  This one is sneaky hard.  It is always windy at the San Leandro waterfront.  Sam does not start you out heading into the wind.  He starts you with the wind in your back.  You have a nice PR going for the first half, then you turn around and you hit a wall of wind.  I would not be surprised if people were a minute per mile slower on the way back.

This time, I had my fun as a volunteer.  It was a very good day being out with all of the excitement.  I did not look at the age group times yet.  I am afraid that they may be slower then my fast times.