Driving in here, I could see that there were some rough hills on the course, and they would seem more so because the course was in an area without many trees to hide the hills from view. There was a huge crowd of runners, likely because this run was to honor a local young man who had recently lost his life to cancer.

The warmup run made me feel the humidity - this might not be an objective observation, but it felt like 100%. The start was pretty well organized and we got out of the start area and onto the boulevard pretty easily. There was a long monster downhill starting at about 3/10 of a mile and I kept thinking that climbing back up this hill at the end was not going to be any fun.

Mile one in 8:00 thanks to the downhill and not long after that, the leader was coming back on the other side of the road, and there was no one even close to him - it was several hundred yards before the next runners appeared. The rest of us made a few hills, turned around and I was at mile 2 in 17 minutes - the downhill helped that split.

Now I could see the monster hill in the distance and I tried to look at something else, but my eyes kept going back to it as I got closer, like a car wreck that you know you shouldn't look at.

Hit that hill and felt the humidty and the incline and it was like my legs quit working - I was just crawling up the hill. But I had plenty of company there. Way ahead I could see people making the final right turn leading to the finish, but that just didn't seem to get any closer.

Finally made it up the hill, a little downhill stretch was a nice reward and soon I was on the final leg, forcing a bit of life out of my legs - I hit the 3 mile mark in 27:30 - a 10:30 third mile - ouch, and finished in 28:28. Where is the water?

Had fun, but I still haven't cooled off.