This morning was the 2006 Heart of the City Half Marathon in Burnsville, Minnesota. Benefitting the Tender Hearts Foundation, the race is an out-and-back course that runs along the Minnesota River. I’ve run all three years this event has been held and unfortunately the weather has not been kind lately. Last year it rained and this year was really hot. I ran a good pace for the first nine miles, but started to feel dizzy and decided to walk most of the remaining distance to finish in 2:35.

This is a new race, but they still have a few bugs to work out. The lines at registration this morning were very long and I only had about 10 minutes to make it to the starting line, which is about a block away from the registration tent. They also decided to hand out T-shirts at registration instead of at the finish, so I had to carry my shirt with me to the start of the race, then duck over to my car during the race to drop off the shirt.

Speaking of shirts, we had issues last year with the children’s races (they did not have any shirts for kids, despite being listed on the online registration form) and the T-shirt woes continued this year. I picked my shirt size during online registration, yet the tent did not know what size I wanted. When I asked for XL, they said they were out of those and only had medium and large left. Why even ask then?

On a more serious note, they continue to have issues with drinks on-course. The first year they ran out of water at the last two stops and this year there were large gaps between stops on a very hot day. Also, with running magazines recommending drinking only sports-drinks during marathons, this race continues to offer only water (both on-course and at the finish). I like the course and the cause, but I think I may take a year off and see if things inprove for the fifth anniversary…DK