ING Miami Tropical Half Marathon
Miami, Florida
Sunday, January 31, 2010

I race walked the ING Miami Tropical Half Marathon on Sunday, January 31, 2010 in Miami, Florida. The temperature was around 67 to 73 degrees during the race with overcast skies and wind in exposed areas. Fortunately the predicted rain never arrived. The course is flat except for the crossing of the high bridge on MacArthur Causeway and features Ocean Drive in South Beach. The first water/Gatorade station was near mile three with the rest of the station spaced approximately every mile thereafter. There were 18000 participants in the half and full marathon which caused the water/Gatorade stations and some of the course to be somewhat crowded. There were plenty of enthusiastic volunteers, however. Intersections were controlled by friendly police officers. Many cheering spectators were interspaced along the course. The pre-race exposition featured Olympian Ryan Hall as well as past Olympians Elva Dryer and Michael Ash. My friend, Dane Rauschenberg, also spoke about completing 52 Marathon in 52 weekends in 2006. This was the eighth year for this event and I have completed 7 marathons and 1 half marathon since its inception. As always the event was extremely well organized. I enjoyed myself as usual even though my time was slow because of being tired from leaving Maui at 2:45 AM EST Friday morning and arriving back in Key West at 9:00 PM EST on Friday night, then getting up early to drive to Miami on Saturday and waking up at 4:00 AM Sunday to proceed to the starting line.