The Thrifty Runner: Baltimore Half Marathon 2016 Race Review!

Since the first time I ran the Baltimore Half Marathon in 2013, I've been curious to find out how I could do if I weren't injured. (I had IT Band Syndrome that first time, and it was my first half marathon too!) This year I signed up for the King Crab Challenge, which is a total of three races: The Frederick Half Marathon (my review), the Baltimore 10 Miler (or B10, my review), and the Baltimore Half Marathon (or Full Marathon) in the same calendar year. In addition to entry into the three races, you get an extra medal (for doing the Maryland Double) and an extra premium after you finish the Baltimore race. This year they started giving out medals at all of the races (the medal being new for the B10) so when you finish the series you end up with 2 shirts, a jacket (the usual premium for the B10), 4 medals and the King Crab premium.

Anyways. The Baltimore half.

So naturally it started with the expo which is at the Baltimore Convention Center. Parking for it is free in the F, G, and H lots and they even had a free shuttle to the expo. I thought the bus took too long and it was a gorgeous day so I opted to take the short 3/4 of a mile walk to the convention center. You start out by showing your e-card to volunteers at the bib tables in the lobby of the building. Then after grabbing a clear plastic bag to be used for bag check you get your race shirt.

After working your way through all of the race merch sold by race organizers you are then let loose in the rest of the expo to visit the different exhibitors. Quite a few of them have some great swag, but this year it seemed like a lot of the space was taken up by some very random companies--like one wanted to draw blood (I walked away when they said they wanted to do that), a leaf gutter company, Geico, and BGE (the main Maryland gas and electric company.) I would've rather seen the space taken up by other running related companies that were definitely missing--Sweaty Bands and Nuun came to mind almost immediately on my way out. (I really enjoyed seeing Sweaty Bands at the Cherry Blossom expo in the spring, and Nuun is at just about ALL the big expos.) I didn't end up buying much, but I definitely had to get some new Bondi Bands (they've started using sublimation techniques to print some of their headbands rather than screen printing and the results are amazing!) and a new shirt from Charm City Run.

(If you don't know about the Baltimore Hon, here's a great explanation on Wikipedia!)
As far as swag goes, I came home with a little bit.

(In less than a month I'll be running the Richmond Half marathon, so when they were giving away 13.1 stickers for the race I had to grab a couple for my Dad and I!) I ended up with the stickers for the Richmond half marathon, sunglasses from Medstar Health, a cup with race brochures from J&A Racing, a sample of Sweat-X detergent, a personalized shoe tag, a scratch and win card for the Corrigan tent sale in December and a headband from Pandora. The first freebie I got was from the Mazda booth since they were making personalized shoe tags. When I got to the expo the line wasn't very long at all so I took advantage of it.

Since the line was so short, I was a little under the gun to figure out how to personalize the tag. They had some suggestions, but I looked down at my Momentum wrap bracelet that I had custom made and thought it would make a good shoe tag too.

So fast forward to Saturday morning. A bunch of the ladies in one of my running groups decided to take the light rail into Baltimore for the race. (After having to deal with Baltimore traffic more often than I'd like to admit, I was totally fine with paying $3.40 to avoid it.) I got on a train a little after 8am and arrived in PLENTY of time. In fact, I saw some of the 5k runners finish. And I had a chance to go to a hotel bathroom that I used the last time I ran the Baltimore half marathon. And something magical happened. I had to get photographic evidence.

A huge empty bathroom. All to myself. Had to get an obligatory bathroom selfie as well.

After getting to use that bathroom all by myself I was feeling pretty psyched. (Seriously, I almost started spinning in there because of how awesome it was and knowing that soon I would have to keep close tabs on my elbows.)

Then I trekked over to a meeting area a couple of my running groups had agreed on for pre-race pictures and so we could walk to the starting area together. Okay, and get in one last bathroom stop. (The hotel bathroom was just far enough away that we wouldn't be able to get to the starting line in time even if we ran.)

At this point I was feeling pretty psyched. I couldn't believe I was doing this race again! I was still a little nervous since this is also the race where I was injured 3 years ago. Thankfully a pep talk from some of the ladies in my running group helped with any final pre-race jitters.

The race was a bit of a blur, but it was fun doing the race again now that I'm more familiar with Baltimore. There were definitely more people offering beer than I remember, but I still didn't grab any. (I did notice that some people grabbed it thinking it was water--what an unpleasant surprise!) I also enjoyed seeing the eye of the tiger people, and all the different creative signs. (There were lots of political ones this year.)

After finishing, I got my awesome 13.1 medal, visited the snack tables and loaded up a space blanket with various chips, granola bars two bottles of water, and my beer tickets. After leaving the runner's village, I got my King Crab premium (a wonderful, plush blanket with the race series logo), my Maryland double medal and a free beer. The line for the beer went surprisingly fast since they had pre-filled the cups and another person was taking the tickets and handing out the beer.

After finishing most of my beer I ran into a couple friends and then we began the journey back on the light rail. After I got back to my car and started taking off my spibelt and putting away everything for the journey home I heard a low rumble coming from above so I looked up. It was the Sky Typers from World War II writing "Salute Our Military" in the air!!! Definitely cool to see and it reminded me of the old dot matrix printers that I grew up using.

Since my arms were now empty (the blanket was so big, and along with the space blanket filled with snacks it was tough to be able to get many pictures.) I could FINALLY take a selfie in my car with my medals.

I couldn't wait to get home and get a good look at the plush blanket King Crabbers got for participating in all three races. When I finally unfolded it and got a good look at it, I was not disappointed! After taking a shower, I wrapped myself up in it and took a nice long nap.