Real Men Wear Pink?

She's rocking the outfit much better than me

In an effort to get ready for pacing the Pink Series Half Marathon on Saturday, I spent some time feeling the essence of the event. In a race with 800+ women and only 10 men, it took some work. I had to ask myself a couple of the following questions:

• Do I look fat in these tights?
• Would it look better to go with the black shorts with silver trim or the black shorts with the white trim?
• Should I wear my hair up or down?
• Hat or no hat?

After a couple of these questions, I began to break out in a cold sweat and started feeling slightly nauseous.

The weather went from a projected 60-70 degrees for the day (2 weeks before) to a chilly projected high for the day to be 39 degrees (29 at start time). I had to do some digging around to get out my cold weather gear in preparation for the race.

The race officials gave us a table at the race expo, put us up for the night in a hotel and fed us dinner in addition to getting all the gear the racers did. 

Race morning was cold and wet alternating between rain and snow. I changed places with one of the other pacers so that instead of pacing the 2:20 group, I moved up to 2:00 pace group.  This was much closer to what I have paced in the past so I didn't have to focus on slowing down as much. We spent as much time on the bus or in some covered shelter areas as possible before the race began.

I started with a group of people who said they would be sticking with me. In the end, there were about 6-8 that finished close to our group. The course consisted of several small rolling hills with a couple inclines. I banked about a minute and half at the beginning to have as a cushion if the course ended a little long. I stopped about 200 yards from the finish to cheer on and push forward some of those who were behind me. I finished in 1:59:29.

I expected the charm to be more inventive

Instead of giving out medals, they gave out a charm. They had four well-dress executives giving the charm. When I walked up to one and asked him for the charm, he gave me a strange look. When I held out my hand, he breathed a sigh of relief and handed it to me. I thought the charm would be nicer and represent the race better. Instead it was a small rectangle with the words "Park City '11" on it. I did some looking around and it costs about $.50 in bulk. It was rather disappointing. The race bag did contain a set of Skull Candy earbuds which was a great boon.

All in all, the race was fun. I enjoyed working with the ladies to accomplish their goals and also to be one of the lucky few men who can say that they have run the Pink Series Half Marathon.