We Come In Peace. We Come in Peace again.

Today was J and my fateful return to the Martian Invasion of Races.  The trip down there was much less eventful than last year's mess.  We found our way straight there without detours and parked quickly, with plenty of time for packet pick-ups and restroom breaks.

This year the shirts were Space Invaders themed.

This year was so much warmer than last year that I started off in shorts, and wore the same purple martian "We Come in Peace" shirt as last time.  I know, not very exciting but I didn't feel like buying a Martian Manhunter shirt, and this one is still too small to run in...

I wish this year would have had as much drama as last year to share on here, but honestly it just wasn't the case.  Out of fear of tanking like last year, I went out fairly conservative and held that pace until the turn around.  I picked it up a bit after the turn, where I saw J, who was mocking me and my traditional Fonzie-styled thumbs-up running form (ayyy!), but I don't think I did enough.  I hit mile 10 knowing I should have done more.  I pushed up that hill in mile 11 that was nearly non-existent, wondering why it gave me such trouble last year and how much of a whiny weakling I was.  Then I kicked out about as much as I could for the rest of the race, but there was just too much energy left to expend.  I should have pushed harder.  It's different when you wish you could have and it just wasn't there, but this was a genuinely mediocre effort all around on my part.  It was nice, however, to beat a lot of familiar people from last year.

Even with that, this was the second best half time I've put up at 2:13 2:11 (apparently they've put up corrected chip times) , and I'll take it.  It is, after all, about 7 9 minutes less than last year's "adjusted time," due to the 13.4 mile overshoot of the course.  I felt fine and ready for more, which bodes well for the Detroit Marathon.  J barely even got training for this one and his longest run was the 8.5 we did earlier in the week, and he did fine as well.  I believe that half marathons have just lost their intimidating effect on us now.

 They stepped up the medals from last year with printed lanyards and the medals themselves being twice as large

 Last year's was barely larger than the button they gave us this year...

J and I went over the Cheli's to get some chili and a beer, since he's never been to one.  We ate and played a couple rounds of bubble hockey to a 3-2, 1-2 draw, and headed back to take a few photos (which I'll try to add later).  Like I said, I wish I had more to report, but it was pretty much a standard issue half marathon.

It was a course PR, though, and my best daytime half so far.  So not being a morning person, maybe that counts for something.  Besides I do consider owls one of my "power animals."  Tell em, Elspeth:  "We are creatures of the night, we are children of la luna!"