D'oh!

For some unknown reason, when I looked at the date of my half-marathon months ago, I assumed it was on a Sunday.  Last night I realized that my race is on Saturday not on Sunday!  I'm glad that I realized on Wednesday night instead of Friday night or on Saturday as the race takes place. 

That last scenario would have been much worse than that time I ran the Virginia Beach half-marathon with a good friend of mine.  He had looked at the schedule, and I assumed he knew the correct start time information....  Well, as it turned out, he was off by half an hour on the start time.  As we were walking up to the start, I kept thinking that the race was really shockingly poorly attended.  My friend and I separated so that I could find my pace group, which had long since left.  I stood there for a minute or so, chatting with my spouse, who had come to the start line to cheer us on.  Eventually, I heard a few people yelling go, so I decided I would go.  I crossed the starting line 20 minutes after the race had officially started, and about ten minutes after that my friend was the last person to cross it (he had gone off and done a warm up). 

After we had both finished (he sprinted past me between the mile 1 and mile 2 marker), I complained that we must have been given inaccurate information.  My friend then admitted that he had somehow gotten it in his head that the start time was 7:30 instead of 7.  

So I guess the moral of the story here is to look closely at the race schedule and double and triple check it.  Oh, and to look at it yourself.