Race Director Notes: Lone Star Half Marathon and 5K

Well I think it’s been a couple of weeks since my last blog post, sorry I’ve been a little preoccupied.  My latest project at work took a lot out of me, but the end result was well worth it.  There has been a lot of anticipation for the inaugural Lone Star Half Marathon and the numbers continued to increase up until the start of the race.  I’m happy to say we had around 1100 runners register for this first year event and 885 runners that actually showed up to race on Saturday morning.  Myself along with our Split Second and iRun crew had a long weekend, setting up in Luckenbach, with lots of details to put in place for packet pickup, water stops, vendor and sponsor set up, iRun Expo, pooper locations, food,  ice, etc., etc., etc.  We met some amazing people in Luckenbach that took care of us and really live and breathe what Luckenbach Texas is all about.  I have to send a shout out to my new friends in Luckenbach, Terry, Virgil, Abbey, Hayden, and everyone else that helped us this past weekend and let us take over the town. 

Race morning for our crew began at 4:00am, finish line set up, tents, packet pick up and more. Again good old Javi was up and rolling before everyone else.   Amazing volunteers showed up to help early in the morning, which was awesome.  It’s a wonderful thing to have people take time out of their day to volunteer and help support the runners.  Most races we wait and pray that our volunteers show up, this is probably the most stressful part of my week.    Will we have volunteers???  Thankfully we have amazing Team members, staff, family and friends of iRun and of course Team in Training that came out and took care of everything.  Sponsors and vendors began setting up by 7:00am and everything else started falling into place.  Last minute registration and packet pickup makes for a few long lines, but everyone was ready to go by 8:00am.  A few quick announcements and national anthem was sung by the lovely Carol Healey, and the runners took off on a gorgeous morning.  Weather couldn’t have been any better, which is rare, as I tend to bring crumby weather to our races. 

The first 5K finisher comes strolling in around 8:20am, and the rest follow.  Although we had a 5hour time limit on this course, everyone finished by 12:00pm.  We knew this was going to be a challenging course, but hopefully everyone enjoyed the quiet Hill Country roads and scenery.  I’m sure the cows enjoyed seeing some action for once.  At 1hr and 19 minutes the first half marathoner came cruising by the finish line.  Great time for this course. If you didn’t stick around for the awards and after party you really missed out.  Luckenbach is the epitome of what Texas is all about.  First and foremost there was Lone Star Beer, the National Beer of Texas along with a few Lone Star beer models.  There was a true Texas Longhorn, Texas BBQ, Hill Country wine from Messina Hof , a local general store, and then there was music from Dale Watson.  True Texas Country music and favorite in Luckenbach it was an honor to have Dale and his band join us bright and early in the morning.  Runners finished their race and hopefully had a chance to recover with post race massages from our amazing Dr. Patrick Doyle from Hill Country Spine and Sport.  Thank god for Dr. Doyle, what a lifesaver!!  I don’t want to forget about our race sponsors that provided the wonderful nutrition and hydration on the course, along with the fabulous running apparel from Asics, Superfeet, Nuun, Huma Chia Energy Gels, and Fuelbelt.  Our runners were extremely lucky to have this product on the course. 

 At the end of the day, only a few minor hiccups but overall a very successful race.  We enjoyed a cold Lone Star before we all said goodbye and road off into the sunset.  Another race down and three more to go.  Next big race is the Texas Too Hot and believe you me, it is TOO HOT!