This race is an annual running festival in Melbourne Florida,  comprising marathon, half marathon, 10k and 5k. It is a mainly flat for 9 of the miles following the banks of the India River lagoon and back down the beach side barrier island, linking the 2 flat stretches are 2 bridges of approximately 2 miles each and are steeper than you would think !! It is described as a scenic route and even though it is a road race there are pelicans and dolphins to be seen in the river.

The half marathon started after the marathon at 6.30 am to avoid the heat of the day. It was quite cool and windy at the start …in fact too windy to put up the starting arch !! The weather heated up and was approximately 20 degrees at 8 am, luckily it clouded over and cooled slightly toward the end of my run. However the wind didn’t drop and coming over the final bridge runners were faced with a wind with reported gusts of 40mph, too windy for the finish arch.

Along the route there were 12 musical acts comprising several bands of differing genres and individuals playing guitar, violin, saxophone, together with a couple of DJs giving support to runners.

I felt very at home as many people were ‘jeffing’ my preferred run/walk method of running.

I was slightly disappointed with my time of 2:42:01 being 5 mins slower than last year …. But I’m not getting any younger, I came 544th out of 742.

The winner ( Patrick Cutter) completed the run in 1:14:59 and the first woman (Andrea Bradshaw) in 1:20:18

The medal is described as ‘ bold and beautiful’ and indeed was nearly the size of my head… depicting a bee and honeycomb design.

As I had worked as a volunteer the day before , giving out bib numbers I got an extra volunteer t-shirt, baseball cap and half price entry to next year’s race which I have now signed up for.

For full results see The Publix Florida Marathon-Half Marathon-10K-5K Results (runsignup.com)