Lewis and Clark 'Marathon'

Lewis and Clark 'Marathon'. Judy and I got up about 5am, got dressed, went to the bathroom, got everything ready, checked the radar - and saw that t was going to be one rainy day. We headed out about 5:30 to Riverport to park, and it wasn't raining *too* bad at this time, but once we got to Riverport - it was raining *hard*. Someone posted a video from the parking lot pre-race here. 

I venture out of the car to drop off my post race bag, and am immediately soaked, and that's with a pancho on and with an umbrella. The parking lot has areas where the water is already 3 or 4 inches deep. Get back to the car and wait. About 6:15, Judy and I hop out to use the bathroom, then hop back in. Then at about 6:45 we get out so we can line up for the race start. We stand there with everyone else for about 30 minutes waiting for things to start, apparently there was some delay with getting the traffic control in place and such - most likely because of the rain. But we finally get going.

 It's still raining hard and the wind is brutal. Doing a slow run and taking a lot of walk breaks anytime I'm into the wind, figuring I should save my energy, it's going to be a long day. Right after mile 2 - I have to use the bathroom, again, which takes about 5 or 6 minutes. Guess I didn't go enough before heading out. I get back going and there's a little out and back where the 'out' is with the wind, and I get in a zipping 9:39 mile with the wind carrying me, but then it was back into the wind. Still trudging along. At the 370 bridge over the Missouri, I take my planned 1 mile walk break, and then get back to running on the downhill side of the bridge. At the bottom of the hill we start heading south towards downtown St Charles. This is wrong, we should have headed north at this point, and sure enough, pretty soon I hear people saying that the race has been rerouted and will be a 10 mile run.

So I jog back in to the finish, get my 'finishers' medal and call Judy to see where she's at. She'll be finished in about 15-20 minutes and after she gets in, we get a little food and talk to Debbie (one of the race organizers) a little. She said that the north part of the course got flooded, with the volunteers at the aid station being stranded by the flood waters. The Katy Trail - which the second half would have been ran on, and downed trees on the course because of the wind. It was disappointing, but certainly memorable. So we head back to the car via the shuttle bus, and we're glad we showed up early - the parking lot that people would have parked in who got there later than us is flooded with a few feet of water and cars with water to the top of the wheels. Even though we only ran 10 miles, we still went to Sam's Steakhouse where we ate more than we should have, but it was very tasty.

Overall an ok run - slow for a 10 miler, but I didn't know it was going to be 10 miles, heh. Splits were all over the place, 11:32, 11:08, 19:00 (bathroom break), 9:39, 11:00, 11:34, 13:45, 12:15, 11:01, 10:55. Total official time was 2:02:53 for a 12:17 pace. I'll be back next year!!!